A few months ago I decided to be a bit more ‘spontaneous’ in my approach to my next print. I felt that my work was becoming too pre-planned and risked losing that sense of serendipity that is be part of the printing process; the cutting and printing of the block was becoming, essentially mechanical exercise. To this end, after a few initial pencil marks on the lino, the rest of the ‘drawing’ was done using my No. 12 blade as the reduction stages progressed. Of course, working in this ‘spontaneous’ way inevitably resulted in me making many ‘spontaneous’ mistakes. What was supposed to be a single block reduction print using 7 colours, ended up as a 3 block print with so many overprints and reductions I lost track of the number of colours and hues used!
Based on a very old 5 x 4 photo I took years ago on a Greek island holiday, the print measures 30 x 40cms. Printed with T.N. Lawrence oil based inks (using vast quantities of reducing medium) on Bristol Board, ‘Waves’ is in an edition of 12 - having lost 3 to ‘spontaneous’ mistakes!
