War graves and battlefields

In May 2011 I went on a tour of the World War I war graves and battlefields of Northern France and Belgium. I had always wanted to visit these sites again after driving through northern France with my parents as a boy, on camping holidays and noticing the incongruity of the many cemeteries in an otherwise sparsely populated rural landscape. I remember thinking there were more graves than people.

My aim was to sketch and paint my way through the tour, taking photos, recording thoughts and emotions and then bring it all back home to see what I felt. The sketch book has become a sort of travelogue which is an interesting visual record but the emotional impact on me has a caused deep reflection that I'm not sure how to respond to with my art, but respond I will.

I won't record every detail of the tour but I will record two snippets. When I get my sketchbook back from my tutor I will also upload some of the sketches I did so that you can see how they relate to my subsequent work.

On the first full day we toured the battlefields of the Somme, Thiepval, Delville Wood and most movingly Newfoundland Park. Newfoundland park covers 84 acres of original trenches so you can imagine what it must have been like on 1st July 1916 when the first Battalion of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment advanced forward down the falling ground of no mans land towards the German trenches (still there) less than 100 meters away. 10 minutes before the advance the huge Hawthorn Mine with 40,000 lbs of ammonal explosive had been blown about 1 km away (read Birdsong by Sebastian Faulkes for details of the mines) . The commander of this sector thought that blowing the mine 10 minutes before the plan would be a good idea but in fact it merely alerted the Germans to the attack and of the 801 Newfoundlanders who went into attack only 68 were not killed or wounded.

This single action is seared into the Newfoundland consciousness, the park is maintained by the Canadian government for whom it is a national monument and the canadian students who act as guides consider it a great honour to be selected for the job. The impact on the small community of Newfoundland which is basically a bit of rock near Canada where there were more moose than people would have been devastating. God knows why they were even fighting in a war half a world away.

I hadn't realised how much this experience had affected me until later that evening when I was chatting over a beer with a guide from another tour. As the evening wore on he began to open up about his experiences with the Paratroop Regiment during the Falklands War and I mentioned that one of my school friends had been killed with the Marines at Goose Green. When I told him what I knew about Lawrence's death he said he had known him and started telling me details such as who his commanding officer was and what it was like. I hadn't thought about Lawrence for several years and this chance evocation of the past caused the floodgates to open and I was overcome by suppressed emotion to the point where I had to make hurried apologies and retire suddenly to my room. Luckily I didn't meet the ex soldier at breakfast the next morning.

The second 'snippet' was our visit to Langemarck which is the cemetery for the German soldiers who fought in that area. It affected me because of the very different style to the allied cemeteries in the area.

The cemetery is surrounded by walls and a moat with pollarded willows that punch the air in defiance or stand like mutilated limbs which ever takes your fancy. It is in two parts. In the first part are the graves of 10,143 men of which 3,836 are unknown and then immediately through the entrance is the mass grave or Kameradengrab of 24,917 men with 86 bronze pillars bearing their names. On the far side of the cemetery stand four brooding statues, the figures of their mourning comrades, small isolated clusters of crosses break the surface of the ground beneath the loft of oak trees like mushrooms on the forest floor.

In the second part of the cemetery, beyond the oak trees and three large concrete bunkers are the graves of a further 9,475 men. The total number of bodies, in this thoughtful representation of the life cycle of the forest is 44,292 and I found the imagery of 44,292 leaves falling to the ground to mould and give new life poignant and dark and in stark contrast to the antiseptically neat rows of white headstones in the allied cemeteries.

So a lot to think about all in all.

Royal Society of Painter/Printmakers Exhibition - Bankside

I went to the Bankside gallery next to the Tate for the annual exhibition of the Printmakers Society. It was much better than last year, although my appreciation of printing is possibly deeper having spent a year trying to do it myself. What I found most interesting was the fact that I was drawn to colourful relief prints rather than etchings or engravings and in particular the ones using an imaginative approach to the subject rather than being purely representative.

The only exception to my prejudice against etchings was 'A Glimpse of St Paul's which was a view of St Paul's through the silver birches outside the Tate with the millenium bridge in between. Some of the birches were warm orange and deep red with muted greys and yellows in the distance.

Another favourite was 'Missionary Plant and Pumpkin' by Carol E. Walkin which was a linocut an used muted warm greys and bright orange to depict the pumpkin. The missionary plant used a flat green but the shapes of the leaves were interesting as was the negative space.

Gail Brodholt also did some lovely linocuts of London. I bought these cards by her which show flowing lines and and an interesting palette which capture the emotion of the subject matter with their; cold blues, lime green and orange using heavy purple and black to pull it all together.

There were some interesting and originally composed linocuts of the city sky line by Janet Brooke and some colourful almost abstract woodcut and stencil prints by Peter Green.

Project 10 - Appraisal 16.5.11

I chose to do a relief print of a large acrylic painting I had done some years ago (see smaller picture) and combine it with the image of the Uffington White horse which I felt would work well as a wood cut. I had really enjoyed working with wood cuts as a progression from lino in the experimental mark making section of this course.

I planned to do a 4 colour reduction wood cut A3 size. The wood cut would be used to depict the distant hills and horse with a framework of hedges surrounding the various fields. I then planned to use a different block exploiting a different textural characteristic for every field. This seemed like a good idea at the time but proved to be a time consuming and ambitious project with 12 separate blocks to prepare, register and print.

The time consuming bit was not the cutting of the large woodblock, which I did from a beautiful piece of beech laminate, but letting every print dry before printing from the next block.I did a series of 5 in total and each one has its own characteristics. The one I finally chose to mount was chosen mainly because the registration is better than the others and there are less finger smudges and stray bits of unwanted ink.

I wanted to convey the feeling of an ancient chalk landscape with the white horse in the distance and a chalk road taking the viewers eye through the texturally interesting landscape. I achieved this. The composition works well and whereas the original painting had no focal point at the end of the track, the white horse provided this in the print. I liked the sinuous line of the track and hedges and I particularly liked some of the shapes of the fields which were interesting in their own right.

It was surprising how inventive one can get when looking for interesting textures to print and my favourite was the reverse of a piece if lino using the coarse hessian to get the effect of a ploughed field. Other things I used were bits of rough cut timber and pieces of card painted onto with a hog hair brush.

Again, planning well with colour notes and experimental prints and drawings made the whole thing more successful but some of my failings included not keeping my hands clean and in poor registration. My printing technique is getting better but I really need to be more meticulous with the process and make sure the ink only goes where it is supposed to!

Whilst I am relieved that this final project in the relief printing part of the course is over I had hoped that my print might have a certain atmosphere but alas it doesn't. The quality of 'atmosphere' I am looking for is not there because the tonal values are not quite correct, the darks are too dark and the range of tones too wide. Had I kept to a lower tonal and chromatic key I might have achieved the effect I was looking for.

On the whole I like relief printmaking and particularly like working with wood.

Critical appraisal of reduction lino cut in 3 colours and black

I have included the original sketches of the rusty shackle I chose to make a print from and I think it attracted me because of the subtle purple and rust colours and the interesting shape, I ignored the background (more on that later!)

I carried out a series of A3 drawings in black felt pen and some coloured drawings in an effort to sort out how I was going to print the image. I planned it but changed the plan several times in the process (see notebook) I think I made the right decisions because I was trying to rescue the print which I thought was not working out as well as I would have liked.

I decided to use a rocking motion with a large broad tool to create the texture of the pebbles in the background and on reflection this was a mistake. I also chose to do an initial print in process yellow which I thought would create a bright airy feel but actually ended up dominating the other colours. By removing so much lino in the background with my initial cuts I created too much white. I would have done better to use a subdued grey colour and only remove the highlights of the metal work with my first cut.

Also by using the rocking motion to create jagged, strict diagonal lines I have created an extremely lively background when it should be subdued.

Apart from the use of yellow the remaining colours worked well, I was particularly pleased with the use of oil paints as ink to print the rusty red colour which came out with a pleasant transparent quality which I will value in future prints.

I also feel the image could have been transformed if I had used one of my more lively sketches in felt pen rather than the sterile, almost mathematically produced drawings I ended up using.

I bought some BFK Rives paper and whilst it was lovely it was extremely expensive and I'm not sure it justified the expense. Fabriano seems a much more cost effective option and remains my favourite.

Of the eight original prints, I ended up with three that were of suitable quality and as the brief only required two I used one to experiment with subduing the background using watercolour washes. This was not successful.

In conclusion I have met the requirements of the brief and some of my print making technique has improved enormously, I was particularly proud of the orange print and kept an example as part of the work I am submitting to my tutor. But my design let me down.

What have I been up to then?

Since my last post I have been working on the Advanced Relief Print projects. I decided to spend at least a month just researching and working in my sketch book on the theme of erosion. This took me to an ancient Victorian cemetery and led to distressing bits of paper with bleach, it's still very much a work in progress but I used one photo from it, of an old rusty shackle, as the basis of my lino cut.

I have included the full entries from my note book as I completed the project, on a separate page.

My original thinking for choosing the theme of Erosion came from reviewing an old sketch book which had taken some black and white photo's of Brompton Cemetery and then extended with collage to cover A3 sheets (see pictures included). I liked the textural qualities I had created, the crumbling masonry, ivy and disfigurement of angels by the elements. When I tried to push these ideas in my sketch book I found it difficult and ran out of steam somewhat. I will come back to it later and may even use some of the images in my final relief prints.

I also felt that this course requires me to explore printmaking not themes like Erosion in an abstract way. That doesn't mean I shouldn't continue my sketchbook explorations as new ideas emerge but I shouldn't feel bad about using an image I generate simply for it's suitability as material for a print rather than to illustrate something I feel about 'Erosion'. In short the course is about Print.

Narrative and thematic similarities between Gauguin and Stanley Spencer

After visiting the Gauguin exhibition it occured to me how important narrative was in Gaugin's work and it made me think of Stanley Spencer's resurrection paintings. Both artists also have a spiritual side, Gauguin disavowed the Catholic church yet explored spiritual themes and even Christian ones as in Christ in the Garden of Olives(pictured), whilst Spencer had a deeply religious Christian upbringing and often referred to biblical passages in his work as in Zacharias and Elizabeth (pictured).

Gauguin Exhibition

On 14th November I went to the Gauguin exhibition at Tate Modern which I didn't expect to have any bearing on printmaking although he did do some primitive woodcuts. I was surprised that I found myself thinking "that would make a nice three coulour lino print".

The exhibition was laid out in rooms, each one relating to a different area his life or work, which I found very helpful in forming a picture of 'Gauguin'. The rooms were as follows:

Identity and Self Mythology - Guaguin used his self portraits to create the identity he wanted for himself. He was afterall, a bourgois banker and family man who turned himself into a bohemian martyr. I can't help wondering when he portrays himself wearing a fez who he is trying to convince that he's a bohemian intellectual. At the time he was a stockbroker painting for a hobby, I think he was trying to convince himself. I can relate to this as I have been a bank manager myself whilst painting as a hobby but I always thought of myself as more of an artist than a bank manager.


Making the familiar Strange - Some of Gauguin's still lifes are amongst his most decorative and surreal, for example the painting of one of his children sleeping with a bird on the wallpaper in the background. The bird looks so real that it could be the subject of the child's dream. Many of the domestic scenes depict normal family life which must have been fraught because he wanted to be a painter but had a family to support. This was a source of tension between him and his wife.

Life and Times 1848 to 1891 - This room included a selection of books and letters and revealed something of his background which was very much rooted in Paris. Even when he was on Tahiti he kept in touch with what was going on in Paris. He is said to have been disappointed that the Tahitian's were so westernised but it didn't stop him using their postal system to stay in touch with developments back home and of course to keep in touch with his dealer.

Guaguin's Drawings - Some of these drawings are 'technically' very good, the sort of drawings most people would think of as displaying exceptional skill. The more interesting ones are those where Gauguin is experimenting and trying to evolve a new raw essentialised form of drawing free from analytical detail.

Landscape and Rural Narrative - Gauguin went to Brittany many times and painted the locals with affection. He found the area wild and primitive. The people were the most important thing to Gauguin in capturing the essence of a landscape and portraying the way they interact with their landscape seems to be part of that. Folk traditions and locally produced items also seem to have inspired him greatly. His first trips to completely alien landscapes were to Panama and then to Martinique in 1887. Martinique in particular seems to have changed his painting from the sombre early paintings of Brittany to a vibrant palette. The paintings also have a flattened perspective which adds to their decorativeness but all this was completely counter to the culture of European art at the time. It made me think of the work by Matisse sometime later with it's leaning towards decoration rather than traditional perspective. Although Gauguin had romantecised preconceptions that led him to these foreign countries which often seem to have received a rude awakening when he got there (he left Panama with dysentry and malaria and found the Tahitians too westernised) he tries to convey in a subjective way how he feels about landscapes, cultures and peoples that are so very different to Paris. You get the message that his senses are screaming "wow!" at the lush vegetation and tropical sunlight but the finished paintings are also a work of his intellect, there is an intellectual process that say's "how can I show these dull Parisians what a tropical island paradise is like?" In the end, Gauguin for me, remains a romantic.

Rooms 6 and 7 - Sacred Themes and The Eternal Feminine - For someone who wasn't keen on the Christian Church Gauguin seems to have spent quite a lot of time exploring pre Christian and pagan themes. There were some primitive wood cuts which worked well for the subjects they portrayed ie. pagan deities. All his carvings and woodcuts could easily have been made by the local inhabitants. I liked the way he worked from a 3D wood carving made by himself back into a 2D painting of the same object. He doesn't draw exclusively on the locals mythology but mixes up Christian and Buddhist beliefs with Tahitian settings to almost create his own mythology.

Room 8 - Life and Times 1889 to 1903 - Not only did Gauguin become what he set out to become ie. a bohemian intellectual artist and traveller, but he went further and actually immersed himself in the culture and folklore of his landscapes in an almost scientific way. He wasn't just flirting with exoticism. However more superficially, he managed to construct a myth about himself that grew and continued growing after his death.

Rooms 9 and 10 - Gauguin's Titles, Teller of Tales - It's quite obvious that words and narrative were an integral part of his work and he even produced wood cut books. Just as he told a tale about himself in the role he wanted to play and then became that role so he wanted his paintings to tell tales or at least imply a narrative often by using enigmatic titles such as, "Are you jealous?", is this addressed to the viewer or is it a question posed by the people in the painting? Is it a drama being played out by the characters or is he saying to the viewer, "I bet you wish you could give up your bourgeois Parisian lifestyle for this tropical heaven". When I looked at some of his elongated landscapes which almost read like story books I am reminded of Stanley Spencer's idealised narrative painting 'The Resurrection, Cookham'

Room 11 - Earthly Paradise - The myth of Gauguin's final years is a carefree existence in a tropical Eden, a myth which he created himself, but the reality was ill health due to an ankle injury and the onset of syphilis. This and his uncertain financial situation don't seem to have dislodged the myth from his imagination one bit, if anything the nearer he gets to death the more fervently he imagines paradise, as if embracing it.

Final thoughtt - Stanley Spencer's earlier devotional paintings such as Zacharias and Elizabeth and Gauguin's 1889 painting 'Christ in the Garden of Olives' are stylistically and thematically very similar. Their portrayals of an earthly paradise and their use of narrative are very much akin to one another.

This exhibition made me realise how complexed a character Gauguin was but also how intriguing, his many facetted work still holding our interest today.