Saturday 5 January 2013

'I Wish' - A new print collaboration

I have recently collaborated with the amazing screenprinter Mark Perronett of Atom Printing, to produce a brand new limited edition print. 

For a long time I have been thinking about producing a print using a mixture of screenprinting and giclee, however I have been slightly nervous about screenprinting errors! So it was brill when Mark suggested the collaboration when he came to look at mine and Twinkle Troughton's Mini Retrospective show last summer.

I made the original painting in 2011: 'I Wish' is a heartfelt statement about all the things I want my artwork to be, whilst at the same time acknowledging the impossibility and naivety of that. It's another motto or action statement akin to my ‘PaintStuff’ piece.  

We decided to emphasize the text, by screenprinting a layer of varnish over just the words on the giclee print.  It's a very subtle effect and shows when you look at it from different angles, so it isn't visible on the image below.  I am more than pleased with the result, the edition was launched at the opening night of our 'Dreaming of a Black & White Christmas' exhibition at A-side B-side Gallery.


'I Wish' is a limited edition of 15
43.5 x 94cms
Giclee on German Etching with screenprinted varnish
£115

If you are interested in purchasing one of these prints please email me at tinseledwards@hotmail.co.uk

Painting workshop at Quintin Kynaston School

In November I was really pleased to be invited to come and work with the year 11 pupils at Quintin Kynaston School in St John's Wood.  I created a day workshop based on a series I made in 2006: '30 Paintings in 30 Days'; pupils kept 7 day diaries, collecting images and snippets of text for the duration.  We used these diaries as the starting point for a series of 7 paintings which would be a kind of self portrait, a visual record of thoughts, feelings and inspirations experienced over the 7 days.  



It seems like ages ago since I painted '30 Paintings in 30 Days' and my work has changed alot in 6 years, at the time I was interested in showing the mundane and everyday things in life as an essential part of the art making process.  I wanted it to be a spontaneous visual description of those 30 days, which tied in to my interest in making work which was immediate, honest and direct.  At the workshop I encouraged the pupils to do the same with their 7 day diaries,  the exercise was a way of exploring the theme of identity in response to my painting.



I absolutely loved running the workshop, the pupils really responded to the idea and had worked hard creating their 7 day diaries the previous week.  They made a really good start to the first of their seven paintings.  I was really touched when some of the students asked to come back afterschool to do an extra lesson working on their paintings.  I was even more touched when I looked through some of their sketchbooks to see they had created versions of some of my other paintings too!




Things like this are far more rewarding than selling a painting at an exhibition, perhaps one of the ultimate goals for any artist is for their work to inspire or make a difference in some way, and for me it was so wonderful being able to see the response of the pupils and experience this first hand.