Things are now back to normal after a nice relaxing, not too busy holiday break. I hope all of you had a nice time and feel refreshed to put the energy in for an interesting and great year!
In November last year I had the very fortunate experience of being selected as one of the finalists for the Rick Amor print prize.
This prize is every four years since it is held every two years but it shares the prize with the Rick Amor Drawing prize, so each has a turn every two years. The event was held at Montsalvat in Melbourne, which is a beautiful gallery. The winning work was a lithograh by Jim Pavlidis. It was indee a beautiful work, you have to see it close up to appreciate the richness of the lithographic marks.
My work was on the topic of refugees. It is called ‘Missing the colours from home’ and it combines various relief techniques, including woodcut and lino. An edition of 9.
This work developed slowly since I made decisions as to the background as I progressed. This is typical of me which it is sometimes a problem if I wait too long to make those decisions and then the wood or lino is cut! In this case it worked well and I was very happy with the result. The experience left me on a high, but what I am learning is that every work I start becomes a challenge in its own right and the process doesn’t seem to get any easier. It is a lot about allowing oneself to just make art and accept with a positive view the many works that don’t quite make it but still have immense value in the subtle learning that goes on all the time.
I have been in the studio every day this week just drawing, printing, painting… the more I do the more I want to do. The last two days I have been making small collagraphs, a medium I am very interested but definitely not very practiced on it. I’ll keep working on it for a little while 🙂
