Four Seasons: a collagraph series (Part One - the idea)

Since Easter I have been one of a small group drawn from York Printmakers who have jointly been acting as Artist in Residence at the Yorkshire Museum of Farming. This wonderful place, just a mile or so from my studio, is home to (as you would expect) an extensive collection of farming machinery and equipment through the ages, but also livestock (from bees and ducks to sheep and pigs), the magical Danelaw Viking Village (regularly inhabited by re-enactors or thronging with groups of school children), a small Roman Fort, a Tudor house, a couple of prehistoric round houses and, to round it all off, the Derwent Light Railway.

The Danelaw Viking Village

It is also, conveniently, in the same village as the splendid Hawthorn Printmakers who made my press and who very generously loaned us a smaller version to use during our time at the Museum.

Our base has been a small pod in the middle of the huge barn which houses the Four Seasons Gallery over two floors. With glass walls on either side we have become one of the exhibits as we work at our printmaking. Visitors sometimes venture in to speak to us and ask questions; more peer in curiously from the outside at the strange captive artists. (None have yet banged on the glass but it wouldn't have surprised me if someone did).

The pod has been equipped to recreate the
 natural habitat of the shy and elusive printmaker...

The exhibits in the gallery take the visitor through the farming year, with audio commentary that is triggered by movement sensors as people walk around from season to season. Working in the pod we hear this commentary over and over again. You might think this would drive us mad.... and I must confess I have heard all I want to hear about the development of the plough... but after a while it became reassuringly consistent and the repetition echoed the theme of the gallery: the unchanging and reliable cycle of the farming year, a pattern which has remained largely unaltered down the centuries.

I initially planned a collagraph print of a countryside scene in the colours of autumn and harvest. As I began making the plate, however, I wondered if I could use the same plate to produce an image for each season. The fixed shape and texture of the plate would represent the enduring landscape, while changes to colours would reflect the passage of time through the year.

Creating the collagraph plate

This was an ambitious idea; collagraph plates are fragile and this was asking a lot of one assemblage of card and glue (and indeed I did have a torn tree trunk disaster which needed surgery with pva glue, backing paper and varnish) but I think I pulled it off. (That's a printmaking pun there. I promise if you're a printmaker it's hilarious.)

details of 'Autumn' and 'Spring'

The finished prints will debut at our end-of-residency exhibition at the Museum starting on 15th October 2016. More information here.

Update: there is now a further blog post explaining and demonstrating in greater depth how these collagraph prints were created. You can find it here.

Is that art or can we sit on it?

Henry Moore; 'Draped Seated Woman' 1957-8

One of our favourite days out is to the magnificent wonderland that is the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. It is one of those special places which lifts the spirits and cleans the soul. Covering 500 acres, there is more than enough walking to make adult legs, let alone tiny ones, rather weary - which is where the title of this post comes from. "Is that art or can we sit on it?" was asked by our then small daughter on her first visit many years ago. The subject of her query was in fact a bench - though we had to admit it was perhaps more aesthetically pleasing than a couple of the sculptures, so we could understand her confusion. (Since then the phrase has become family code to express..ahem..scepticism about artistic merit. Follow us around a museum or gallery and you might hear us muttering it under our breath to each other - most recently I'm afraid in Tate Modern. So we're philistines. What can I say?). Fortunately there are plenty of places provided around the vast spaces of the park for visitors to sit and rest and enjoy the views.

Last weekend my husband and I (along with a large part of the population of Yorkshire, as it turned out) made a special trip to see the newly installed 'Poppies: Wave', a small part of the extraordinary Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red installation which was at the Tower of London in 2014.

In the glorious autumn sunshine our first glimpse of the poppies in the distance was like a fiery beacon, reflected in the water below. What a fabulous setting for this stunning display.

Even on a busy day the park is so big it isn't too hard to escape the madding crowd and find some tranquility. On this visit I spent quite some time just gazing at the reflections in the Boat House which houses JocJonJosch's 'Eddy'.

JocJonJosch: 'Eddy' 2014

Another of our favourite spots is James Turrell's 'Deer Shelter Skyspace'. How can a simple* hole in a roof be so effective and mesmerising? But it is - and with the added benefit that this is simultaneously art AND you can sit on it, or at least in it.

James Turrell: 'Deer Shelter Skyspace' 2007

* I have no doubt it isn't simple at all, but very cleverly designed and engineered to achieve the effect it does.

The Poppies will be in place until 10 January 2016, but the Sculpture Park is open all year round and always worth a visit. Entrance is, astonishingly, free - though of course donations are always welcome. The icing, or perhaps gravy, on a great day out is the excellent restaurant which is very good value and serves up a delicious menu.

Pro tips: 

• Get there as early as you can, especially at the weekends. If you arrive a few minutes before the opening time of 10am you can always set off around the park and open air exhibits before coming back to the visitor centre and indoor galleries.
• Do pick up a map. You can miss entire sections of the park without one.
• Parking is by number plate recognition and you can pay at the machines at any time during your visit. Pay early in the day because the queues at the machines can get quite long later. Don't waste time trying to work out how long you will need; just pay for the whole day, you'll use it!

For more information visit www.ysp.co.uk

Sophie Ryder: 'Sitting' 2007

The Most Happy

I love Hampton Court Palace. I mean I really love it. I love it so much I get a bit weepy just walking through the gates. Visiting from York entails a round trip of 500 miles and an overnight stop in a budget hotel, but it's worth every traffic cone and little plastic pot of UHT milk. Just being there makes me 'The most happy', the phrase Queen Anne Boleyn adopted as her motto.*

When we visited last weekend we headed straight for Henry VIII's kitchens, getting there before the crowds who had been waylaid by the signs to the Great Hall. The costumed cooks had just got the huge open fire going and were starting to spit roast a couple of large hunks of meat. The guides told us that the most common question they are asked by visitors is "Is that a real fire?", which is quite shocking and rather sad. I suppose that in a world of central heating and electric ovens, it is possible for people to go through life without ever seeing real flames and so not be sure what a wood fire looks (or sounds or smells or feels) like.

Look! Earthenware, wood, wicker, stone, herbs... so much loveliness.

Rather a blurry action shot, but I love the way it looks like a Brueghel painting.

After the kitchens we moved on 150 years to William III's apartments (also empty - "Everyone goes to the Great Hall first" said a guide, with a hint of sadness) and made an initial foray into the gardens, before we too succumbed to the lure of Tudor apartments and the Great Hall, where we encountered a team of 'Time Players' in period garb performing 'Pastime with Good Company'. The rest of the palace followed after lunch, including George I's Chocolate Kitchens (yes two rooms JUST FOR CHOCOLATE; forget a gift wrapping room, a chocolate kitchen must be the ultimate sign of a luxury home) and more time in the gardens, which now have 500 deckchairs to mark the 500th anniversary of the palace.  We availed ourselves of two for a while. (If you read my blog post about Chirk Castle you might detect a recurring pattern here.)

Why don't more gardens have fantasy beasts on striped poles? They're wonderful.

The sound track for our journey home was a Music for Feasting CD bought in the gift shop - medieval and Tudor smash hits played on period instruments (Now That's What I Call Minstrels). We head banged in the car in Wayne's World fashion and sang along in Latin.

You might have guessed by now that I am a bit of a Tudor nerd, which is one of the reasons that earlier this year I started a series of hand tinted drypoint etchings based on Tudor drawings. The first two I've completed are taken from Holbein sketches of Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour. The watercolour hand painting of each print, along with the fact that the ink colour is varied for each impression, means that each print is unique (a monoprint). There will be no more than 40 prints in each edition.

Hand tinting an 'Anne Boleyn' etching with watercolour paint.

Tudor Series - drypoint etchings with watercolour tinting

Oil based ink and watercolour on 140lb watercolour paper

Image size 14 x 20.5 cm

Available in my Etsy shop

*Compare and contrast with the 'Bound to Obey and Serve' motto of her straight-laced successor, Jane Seymour. Oh Henry you silly man.

National treasure

A few months ago I was watching Bargain Hunt while I ate my lunch (and there’s a glimpse into the life of a working from home artist right there) and Tim Wonnacott was looking around Chirk Castle. I’d never heard of the place but it looked marvellous. Another lunch break and another tv antiques programme put me on the trail of Wroxeter Roman City, which turned out to be in the same neck of the woods as Chirk Castle. I stored these things up in my heart and remembered them, so when my husband proposed that we book a weekend away I suggested we visit Shropshire. He was a little surprised – he’d been thinking more in terms of Florence or Paris – but I confessed that I was filled with ungrateful weariness at the thought of boarding passes, euros, travel insurance and putting my shoes in a plastic tray and I would really like just to get in the car and drive somewhere we had never been before.

So it was that late on a recent Friday evening we arrived at Sebastians in Oswestry, which attracted the requisite rave reviews on Trip Advisor and promised beamed ceilings, four poster beds and an award winning restaurant – all of which it delivered, with knobs on (polished brass ones).

The next morning the sun shone as we drove up to Chirk Castle which is a crucial few hundred metres over the Welsh border, as firmly announced by the red dragon fluttering proudly from the battlements. Rising into view on a hill ahead of us, the castle looked for all the world like the set of a Hollywood swashbuckler. We would not have been surprised to be stopped by some elegant men in tights on horseback, laughing uproariously and slapping their thighs. Instead we encountered the nice volunteers at the ticket office who scanned our National Trust membership cards and booked us onto a guided tour, which got us into the interior of the castle ahead of the usual opening hours.

This is a gem of a house, having been lived in and loved for centuries. The effect of generations extending and redecorating is that you find yourself making a tour of the history of interior design, through medieval simplicity, Jacobean majesty, Georgian classicism, over the top Victorian Gothic thanks to a Pugin makeover and, most recently, homely 1930s comfort. The gardens are equally delightful, lacking only playing card gardeners painting the roses. Dotted around are pairs of deckchairs, placed so thoughtfully it would be rude not to sit in them. So we did. For quite a long time.

The view from a deckchair

When it was time for a little something, the tea room did its National Trust thing and supplied our needs perfectly.

Note for overseas readers: when visiting National Trust properties you have to  eat a cream tea.
IT'S THE LAW.

Most artists are probably used to the funny looks they get when they stand with their backs to the usual photo opportunities and focus on the unnoticed. I got some useful shots in the gardens and also at Erddig, another nearby National Trust property, to be filed away for future prints.

I have a thing for water lilies - leaf forms, reflections, shadows. What's not to love? (I talked about creating a water lilies woodcut in this interview for Jackson's Art a few years ago).

This Virginia creeper (parthenocissus tricuspidata) was on a wall at Erddig and is another candidate for my foliage series of woodcuts, like these two.

Beech and Ivy hand burnished woodcut prints

We packed a lot into one weekend and this was not the end of our Shropshire adventures, but that's probably enough for one post. To be continued….