Without the state

Ocean Park - paintings by Richard Diebenkorn

I've been looking at the Ocean Park series of paintings and prints by Richard Diebenkorn (via this book, but also here.) There is something about them that keeps drawing me back. They are deceptively simple with subdued colours, apparently just variations on geometric subdivisions of a rectangle. This makes them seem akin to Mondrian, but they have much more depth to them. They clearly owe much to Klee, but also to de Kooning, at least in terms of colour values. In the end though they are themselves and stand on their own merits.

When I was at school, studying maths we were always told to 'show your workings' and in many ways that's what is going on with the Ocean Park paintings. Variations, second thoughts have been painted over, but their ghosts remain.

I think this is part of their appeal to me, since I've always been intrigued by the idea of palimpsest, even before I became an artist. Both the urban and rural landscapes of Britain can be viewed as archaeological palimpsests. Take the time to look around any British town or city you will find signs of previous activities. The street pattern in many Northern industrial towns can often be mapped against ancient field boundaries, while alignments going back into pre-history may still be seen. (http://locateit.leeds.gov.uk/CharacterOfLeeds/UrbanHistory.aspx?p=3) Beneath the streets archaeological investigation and civil engineering projects alike reveal layer after layer of activity. (http://www.crossrail.co.uk/sustainability/archaeology). The same applies in the wider landscape. Anyone familiar with Britain, will read into these paintings the pattern of fields, woods and lakes which almost define the English landscape. That landscape is almost entirely man made, even in the supposed wild areas like Dartmoor or the Scottish Highlands and has developed out of complex and cumulative processes of human intervention.

So just as imperfections and variations disturb the surface of the modern world, revealing its past to those who look, so the Ocean Park paintings reflect the process of their creation, revealing the changes made and to my mind, humanising their geometrical abstraction.

I'll come back to this another time with images from prints inspired to a degree by Klee and Diebenkorn, and also to some new work I'm planning which will attempt to marry the geometry of this work to another interest of mine, the rock carvings and standing stones of the Neolithic era. Here's some tasters with a couple of trail proofs.

For sale on Etsy

I'm an artist printmaker, I took this up on retirement (for the second time) but even before then I was always taking photographs and have done so for over 50 years now. The visual arts have always been important to me and I've always been fascinated by ephemera and by things like old maps, travel posters and graphic design generally.

I have two shops on Etsy, one selling my own work, the other selling vintage graphics in reproduction. This post is about the second, which you can find on Etsy as Panchromatica Designs (why Panchromatica? - that's a long story, some of which is told in very early posts on this blog.)

A chance discovery of some large digital scans of pulp magazines led me to set up on Etsy selling copies of these and some floral prints.Since then the range of images I sell has grown to include advertisements, architectural drawings, maps and plans, vintage photography, botanical prints, Golden Age comics and pulp magazines and a host of other subjects. All the images I sell are public domain or otherwise out of copyright. Having the shop gives me the excuse to go digging around in digital archives and to browse antique and vintage stores in search of new and exciting things that I can then share with my customers.

The shop on Etsy is arranged by sections – think of them as departments in a store. Each section is based around particular content, so for example if you want motoring prints, the motoring section is the place to look. If instead of the print subject you want to look for a particular medium such as photography, engravings, woodblock prints etc, these are best found by doing a shop search. I'm adding cross links to other similar items but this will take some time as listings fall to be renewed when I take the opportunity to revise and update them..

Most of the images I sell are ready mounted (sometimes called matting) to fit standard frame sizes. This makes it easier for you to frame as you choose using ready made frames, while still allowing you the option of a custom frame. The standard sizes are given in inches, since most sales so far are to the US or UK. However if you want a mount to fit a standard metric frame I'm happy to oblige for no extra cost. I can also provide mounts to non-standard sizes on request. All my mounts are in antique white. I have found this complements most images. Standardising materials and frame sizes helps me keep costs down and means you get a great image at an affordable price. If you really want a different colour, let me know before ordering and I will give you a quote and a revised delivery date.

All materials used in matting are high-quality and to the same standard as those I use for my own original art work available from my other shop. All mounted prints include a backing piece in the same card as the mount and are packed in a protective cello bag and shipped in securely packed reinforced packaging.

Unmounted prints on heavy art paper are sent flat in similar packaging for those made on heavyweight art paper. Lighter weight prints my be rolled in artist tissue and sent in a mailing tube.

In addition to the selling of these reproduction prints here, I also go to specialist fairs and conventions where I can. If you have a specialist interest and you think I might be interested in a stall at one of your events, please get in touch.

I also offer a service to small businesses, guest houses and hotels, restaurants etc, in fact any business looking to decorate their premises with either reproduction prints, or with original art. Contact me for details of how I can help you.

All the images in the shop are also available as notecards. There is a listing in the notecard section with further details.

Prices in the shop are retail. Please get in touch if you are interested in reselling any of these images in a retail shop.

Please note - although most of these images are either in the public domain or out of copyright, most also incorporate significant amounts of work by me to restore and prepare the images for printing. When you buy from me you are buying the physical print with no further rights to reproduction. If you want to use any of these images in print or digital publications please contact me first.

Update on screen print series

I've finally started on this series of four prints that will be the basis of the Print Club offer I have mentioned before. As a teaser here is the first layer (of about 10) of the first print - or at least the digital file used to make the stencil.

Yes, I know it looks like a bar code, but trust me - once printed in a rich red-brown it looks very different. I've done 10 as the basis for an edition of that size.

The other layers have been produced more traditionally with indian ink:

Watch this space...

 

Screen Print Series

I've started work on a set of prints, likely to be predominantly screen print based, developed out of this Flickr set of digital prints, themselves derived from scans of pastel sketches (I think that's clear...) which are also included in the Flickr set.

So - we started with something like this:

Which became this via Paint Shop Pro:

The first stage of work on the ink jet print is here:

I'm in the process of making the stencil by inking up TruGrain film with indian ink, This layer will more or less cover the blue in the previous image. Others will be for smaller darker areas so that when overprinted the colours deepen.

I think each print will be made up of perhaps 6-7 layers so it wil take me a while to complete the edition.

Also took delivery of my new printer which is a bit of a beast:

Back to the Tango theme

Keeping on with the theme of dance and more specifically tango, here are all of my tango images from Flickr. Some of these are also on my web site, but many of them have never been seen outside of Flickr. As ever, if you see anything you like, get in touch and I will see what I can do.

 

Retrospective - Dance images - March 2005

I hadn't realised that almost all my best selling digital prints date from a narrow period in 2005. All these images were first uploaded to flickr in March of that year. I don't think I have had a period as creative as that since.

Versions of these images can all be found on my web site.

Retrospective - Nightmare in Wicklow - from March 2005

 

Early playing with Photoshop Elements and/or Paintshop Pro. I have actually sold a copy of this to someone, who loved it! Based on my photographs of the Market Square in Tinahely, Co Wicklow.

Print Sizes

A4 Mounted Print £30.00 A3 Unmounted Print £40.00

Retrospective - double portrait - from February 2005

 

Based on a detail from a snatched photo in a cafe. For a time I had an obsession with pictures like this, two heads rarely looking directly at each other. Some times they were the same person, sometimes, as in this one, a transient arrangement of shapes.

I linked some of them to this poem by Derek Walcott

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

And say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Retrospective - Faces in the crowd - from January 2005

 

Another early image, made using only tools within Paintshop Pro or Photoshop Elements. I still like this one, although to be honest, it works better on screen than in print form. I need to do some work perhaps to enrich the depth of colour, perhaps boosting saturation levels a little and printing on matt, watercolour style paper. The concept would also work I think as a collagraph or perhaps even as a solar etching.

Retrospective - Liffey Landscape - from January 2005

Another early digital print, made from a photograph of the National War Memorial Gardens in Dublin, taken from across the River Liffey. More or less behind me is Phoenix Park. This is also an early example of my 'just because you can't see the colours in the scene, doesn't mean they aren't there' approach, hence the sky...

Available printed on matt finish art paper in two sizes. The A4 size includes a mount to fit a standard 30cm by 40cm frame (other sizes possible - let me know in the message to buyer). The A3 size is unmounted to keep shipping costs down. Price includes shipping to anywhere in the world.

Print Sizes

A4 Mounted Print £30.00 A3 Unmounted Print £40.00