Saturday May 13th is the opening reception for Imprints; a new exhibition I am having with my printmaking friend Sarka Buchl Stephenson at the Georgina Art Centre and Gallery. I've been in hiding, not posting much or putting prints in my Etsy store in order to get ready for this exhibition.  But the date is fast approaching and I have just heard that I am going to be doing a short TV segment for the show Georgina Life on Rogers TV.  Our exhibition is about printmaking and so I'm hoping to demonstrate a linocut on Georgina Life.  I've been told there are lots of people who don't know what a  linocut is.  My Facebook feed is full of the beautiful work of other linocut artist because I belong to a group called Linocut Friends.  This gives me the mistaken impression that just about everyone is a linocut artist!  Apparently it isn't so.  So I shall rally my courage and do the TV segment on Georgina Life.  I believe it's airing live on Monday morning at 10:00 if you are local.  If not I'll try and get a copy of the segment and show it here.
Here's a sneak peek at some new work for Imprints!

Musee des Beaux Arts
W. H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Sometimes things happen in life that knock you out of the sky.  Your going round and round in your daily rat race,  perhaps happily, perhaps not, and then boom.  Something happens and life will never be the same.  I made this print several months ago before my sister passed away.  I looked at it last week and I could not remember anything about what I was thinking when I made it.  What is it about?  I know it's based on a vintage toy of an amusement park ride called High Flyers. I know I tend to go round and round, in the school bus I drive and in my head.  Then I remembered the poem above by W. H. Auden.  My daughter read it at my sister's funeral.  It sums up the strangeness of re-entering life which went on around you while you were immersed in tragedy.  And it mentions  Icarus; a "high flyer" who fell from the sky.  There are so many ways to put this together.  Perhaps I am more aware now that everyone goes round and round and we do fall from the sky...and life goes on.

Do you ever create something and then turn around and see that someone else has already done it and done it better.  That's what happened with this Christmas card.  I'd just finished printing my cards when what to I see on Pinterest but a print by an artist I'd never heard of before; Sadao Watanabe.

His work is amazing!  I love this sixties stylizing aesthetic.  It reminds me a little of  Osborn and Woods or Sister Corita Kent.  Every time I find an artist with this style I go nuts!  I'm inspired to do better, but I'm not redoing my Christmas cards.  These will do for this year.

I also have a new studio companion.  I think she will fit in just fine : )

The Traveller is my latest reduction print.  I feel like things are finally coming together;  I'm much more familiar with the ways of my bottle jack press, my Caligo Safe Wash ink is behaving itself and I have been able to tear myself away from renovating.  The  thing about doing renovations yourself is that you are always seeing other little projects that need doing.  I have to ignore those projects because I'm not going to look back on my life and say, "I'm so glad I spent all that time fixing my soffits."

The Loon is a much more worthy preoccupation.  The Loon is a diver and water is a symbol of dreams and multiple states of consciousness.  No one who hears a loon cry on a misty lake can but be affected by this spirit of the north and feel that there is more to life than what we see on the surface.

I called this print "The Traveller" because of the little loon chick who rides on her mother's back.  We are all travellers in a way.  I kept thinking of this print as "Loon in the Lune".  Hahaha.  But it's not a "Lune",  it's the morning sun.  Which is good because "Loon in the Lune"  is a very silly name!

This print will soon be available in my Etsy store,  The Georgina Art Centre and hopefully the proof at Open Studio's Artist Proof sale.

It's been quite a long time since I did a blog post.  After my appendicitis attack and the passing of a dear family member ( my mother-in-law)  I felt weary and not in the mood for social media.  Has anyone else ever had social media fatigue?  It's really not a good thing if you have an online store!  Even though I haven't been online, I've still been making prints.  I was about to post these two new linocuts last week when all of a sudden a pipe burst in my kitchen.  Yikes!  There was a lot of water pouring out and it began to rain in my studio which is below the kitchen.   What I thought was a water shut off wasn't.   After many panicked attempts I managed to stop the water by turning on all the taps, lowering the water pressure and reattaching the pipe.  Apparently, the previous owners of this house didn't think a water shut off was important and put it behind drywall!!!  Luckily my prints were not damaged and neither was my press.  The same can't be said about the floors.  I think there will be a lot of construction going on here this summer.

Amid all this commotion I have two new prints : )
"Dreaming of a Log Home" is a four colour print and I was very excited by the technique of thinning the ink with extender.  The coloured layers are much more transparent.  I love the affect!

"Moose in the Moonlight" is a straightforward black and white print.  It's an image that's been floating around in my mind for ages so it's nice to get it out on paper.

Both of these prints are done on Reeves BFK white paper and they are both now listed in my Etsy shop.  My studio is destined to be a construction zone for the next little while, but that won't stop me from doing some sort of art.  We'll see what the future holds!

I had great hopes for getting much printmaking done last week.  I had the idea for a new multi-coloured reduction linocut all sketched out.  Before Christmas I had been having some problems with my printing ink, but I thought I had figured a workaround.  These water soluble Daniel Smith inks worked wonderfully last summer and fall.  You can clean them up with soap and they are waterproof when dry so I can add watercolour. I loved them!  However, when I started printing my Christmas cards they started going all blotchy.  I couldn't figure it out.

You can see from the photo below.  The first test print is on the left and as I kept printing I started getting the horrible blotchy look on the right. I ended up using my old Speedball ink to make the cards.  After much research I couldn't find anyone who had experienced this problem before.  Why did these inks work beautifully in the summer but not in the winter?  The only complaint I'd ever read about them was that they dried too slowly.   Hmmmm,  That wasn't a problem for me.  In fact, I found they dried overnight.....

That's when it dawned on me.  My hair is now straight not wavy... I need hand cream or my hands look like I've aged 30 years...  Of course!  The air in my house is dryer than the Sahara Desert!  I thought I could just mist the ink with a spray bottle between printings.  So I started my new print but unfortunately the ink started to dry on the plate before I got 2 test prints done!  In frustration I threw the Daniel Smith ink into a plastic bag and they will have to wait until spring.  I've ordered some Caligo Safe Wash inks and I hope they get here soon because I'm itching to get on with this print!  I've used the black Caligo before, in winter, and never had this problem. I used the Caligo to print a few more of my "Inside Out" linos on larger sheets of lovely BFK paper.  After much experimenting with this lino, I think I like it plain the best, without any background.  I'll get these photographed and into my Etsy shop soon!

I'm looking forward to a new year of carving and inking.  My first print this year is a little valentine print which comes in black, pink and blue ink.  The pink and blue ones I made into cards.  I added a little Inktense pencil to highlight the girl.  I don't usually do cards for the on-line market because they are a lot of work for little money.  I'm selling these in my Etsy at two for $12US so it's a bargain : D

As always, I learn a lot from doing.  Next time I make cards I'm going to save myself so much time by printing directly on printmaking paper so I don't have to do so much cutting and taping!  The print in these is attached with acid free double sided raised photo tabs.  (Try saying that 3 times fast!)

I also learned that the terrible trouble I was having printing my Christmas cards was due to the very dry air cause by our furnace.  A little spritz of water between printings works wonders.

I think this little girl comes from my flying and floating dreams.  I don't get many of them.  I wish I could control what I dream about.  I'd be able to practise my flying if I could!

I really should be working on my Christmas cards, but I just finished a new collagraph print. There's nothing quite so exciting as finishing a print when it starts as an idea and some bits of cardboard.   This is big for me,  a little over 10 by 10 inches and hand tinted with watercolour.  Collagraphs are made by taking bits of cardboard or other materials and varnishing them, then applying ink and printing.  It's a fairly simple process that can achieve an amazing variety of results.  I have 3 others to paint.  None of them will end up looking quite like this one.  

But I really should get back to those cards.