Sooo….. this super-subtle-tonal-girl has started to use colour again. The funny thing is I only started doing Cyanotypes when I found out I could change the blue colour to sepia, but now I have begun, I love the blue!
What is the story? Well, for years, I have loved the cyanotypes of several fellow artists in Edinburgh , particularly the work of the fabulous Leena Namari and Cecile Simonis but I wasn’t 100% sure about the colour blue that is traditionally associated with this medium.
Then recently, I visited the studio of Mhairi Law @ Island Darkroom in Lewis and saw that in her lovely Cyanotype textiles, she was getting a darker denim blue and someone mentioned how she does it.
Suddenly a door opened on the medium of Cyanotype. Some internet research revealed it is possible to remove the blue and make the images sepia. Super-subtle-tonal-girl knew the time had finally come to have a go with this medium.
It provides the perfect link. In Edinburgh I had been doing botanical laser engraved prints of everyday plants and herbs that have medicinal qualities. Initially for a solo show at House of an Art Lover in Glasgow, which I was awarded as a prize in a Society of Scottish Artists Annual Exhibition. I am now living on Lewis, without a laser cutter and with a newly awakended curiosity about simple, low tech printmaking techniques that I can do on the Island, whilst I also return to the roots of my practice: Drawing and Painting.
I’ve signed up for Open Studios Hebrides and wanted to show something Lewis inspired but am not quite ready to show my new drawings and water colour paintings, which are slowly evolving. I am mindful of not rushing my re-aquaintance with paint and there is a part of me that loves to engage with a process.
I always know when someone calles me a Printmaker that they don’t really understand what my work is about. It has always been about exploring how broad the definition of drawing can be. Sometimes I draw with paint, sometimes with print, sometimes with a laser cutter and now I’m drawing with found objects and the sun. Is it a print? Is it a photograph? No, to me, like everything else I do, it is a drawing. I love the fact that in Scottish Art Colleges we studied Drawing and Painting, not Fine Art and this has always been how I see my practice, it’s all about drawing, whatever medium I use.
The bog cotton on the machair has always captivated me, because of it’s simplicity and delicacy. It’s soft and fragile, yet so strong, withstanding being blown about by the most wild of the west coast winds.
I hope to have captured something of that delicacy and movement in this varied edition print: Bog Cotton (38 x 38 cm on Sommerset Paper)
Why not come and see this, other Cyanotypes, my laser engraved Medicinal Nature prints and some other works on paper at Grinnebhatt in Bragar, Isle of Lewis, this Thursday 3, Friday 4 and Sat 5 August, 11am-5pm as part of Open Studios Hebrides.
All work is for sale and can be posted out, if you don’t live on the island.