Emblem of My Work

2012-02-01T03:28:00.000-08:00

Exhibition notes

Peter Coates - Marbled Page (60cm x 37cm)

2011-09-22T02:05:00.000-07:00

Emblem 170

Information and materials

No further information.

Emblem No. 170 in an exhibition of 169?

Sterne's 'emblem of my work' in the first edition of Tristram Shandy is marbled on the recto (p.169) and the verso (p.170)

The writer/artist responsible for Emblem 170 made a work that is positioned, most appropriately, at the end of the exhibition - yet is the first to be seen on the blog.

2011-09-22T02:00:00.000-07:00

Emblem 169

Information and materials

This marbled page was created using water colour pencils.

While the shape of the composition mimics the look of one of Sterne’s marbled pages, the melting colours strive to evoke the same irreverence and humour as Tristram Shandy, directing these dissenting attitudes towards the integrity of the printed letter.

2011-09-22T01:59:00.001-07:00

Emblem 168

Information and materials

Namah is a detail of one of the prints in my continuing series of intaglio "Black Angels" but she is also the first of the females to be depicted. As this series has now spanned over 20 years and continues to grow it is a fair enough (though very obscure) emblem of my work and the demonic maternal nature of Namah promises to help deliver yet more into the world.

Mezzotint on copper
printed on Rives de Lin with hand made ink

2011-09-22T01:59:00.000-07:00

Emblem 167

Information and materials

Design uses oil paints (with the addition of gold paint) on carragheen moss size. The black-gold pattern is freehand swirls on craft paper.

2011-09-22T01:58:00.001-07:00

Emblem 166

Information and materials

Alas, no further information regarding this Emblem.

2011-09-22T01:58:00.000-07:00

Emblem 165

Information and materials

Each sheet of marbled paper is unique. Water based paints are dropped onto a size made from carragheen moss where they expand and float on the surface. With a stylus or comb they can be manipulated into patterns. A sheet of paper, which has been treated with an alum mordant, is then carefully laid over the pattern which immediately transfers. While each sheet of paper varies slightly, with care and skill a good match can be made. It is this variation which gives marbled paper its lively quality.

2011-09-22T01:57:00.000-07:00

Emblem 164

Information and materials

Iris, Light.

Dye destruction print

Homeland

Dartmoor

2011-09-22T01:56:00.002-07:00

Emblem 163

Information and materials

Inkjet output on photographic paper – depicting the molecular backbone for Protein 13, a polypeptide whose molecular structure enciphers a poem written by the genetically engineered bacterium D. radiodurans :

“ the faery is rosy of glow…” etc

2011-09-22T01:56:00.001-07:00

Emblem 162

Information and materials

Rubber stamp, ink on paper

2011-09-22T01:56:00.000-07:00

Emblem 161

Information and materials

Pen & Ink

Description:

My mind constantly has creative ideas ticking over at a rapid rate…

The challenge is to pluck the rare ones that aren’t completely farcical, for that ‘Eureka’ moment.

2011-09-21T09:08:00.002-07:00

Emblem 160

Information and materials

The emblem of my work is my ‘mini meadow’.

This picture has been created to look like a blooming meadow on a summer’s day.

It has been marbled on a very small tray using Designers’ Gouache paint, floated onto a substance called Carrageen moss.

Each meadow is one of a kind as every one is produced individually.

2011-09-21T09:08:00.001-07:00

Emblem 159

Information and materials

No extra information.

2011-09-21T09:08:00.000-07:00

Emblem 158

Information and materials

Our Aiguille

short story in pen and ink.

2011-09-21T09:07:00.000-07:00

Emblem 157

Information and materials

In Tristram Shandy, marbling serves as an emblem of both uniqueness (no two pages are identical) and randomness (no two pages ever could be identical). One cannot predict how the oiled dyes will distribute and fix before the sheet is lifted from the bath. The same dynamic applies to our physiology: absolutely unique and the very definition of the individual, but always with aleatoric dispositions, unpredictable development, and singular configurations.

Accordingly, a page from the first edition of Sterne’s book is read here 'pataphysically', as if it were an example of microscopic anatomy, revealing the pathologies and interior structures unique to the copy that supplied the sample. The emblem is “motley”, as Sterne would have it: variegated in colour, but also composed of diverse and incongruous elements – all those chemicals and organisms and processes at endless odds in our interiors.

This page is dedicated to Doctor Joseph Perloff.

2011-09-21T09:05:00.000-07:00

Emblem 156

Information and materials

Sometimes external events determine the shape and course of a project. In this instance I had written a bespoke text, musings on page 169, with a view to printing it out to stick in the box, job done. However my home printer was busted, so I was forced to use a local copy shop ‘second office’. Having sent them the writing as an attachment, they printed out some colour copies, but for reasons best known to them, beefed up the lower case into bold capitals, meaning that the text layout was now too long for the panel. Rather than waste this though, I got them to superimpose it onto a sheet of scrap I had with me, a blog post about generative systems. This palimpsest was then cropped and manipulated. The work was finished off with a faded medal ribbon from Wimbledon car boot sale. An emblem of my own!

2011-09-21T09:04:00.001-07:00

Emblem 155

Information and materials

The period is the typographic representation of an end. It is neither an expression of humour nor of sentiment. It simply is what it is. The image was printed using a Vandercook letterpress machine. Letterpress allows typography to sing and so while the character has passed, the letterpressed period signifies a poetic reminder to the reader of his previous existence.

2011-09-21T09:04:00.000-07:00

Emblem 154

Information and materials

Indian ink and splattered gouache, to depict assassination by custard pie.

2011-09-21T09:03:00.000-07:00

Emblem 153

Information and materials

AH with HA pencil.

My ‘emblem’ I suppose reflects my interest in the play between reality – illusion – allusion and the attempt to make Hybrid abstract / figurative images and discover unexpected visual possibilities that can only be found in painting.

AH/HA can be an audible response on seeing an unexpected visual idea – anything between a revelation, or a knowing finger below the eye.

2011-09-21T09:02:00.001-07:00

Emblem 152

Information and materials

Title: World Political (detail)

Date: 2011

Medium: Ink on paper

2011-09-21T09:02:00.000-07:00

Emblem 151

Information and materials

Medium:

Winsor and Newton ink with Grog Full Metal paint

Biro

Watercolour paper

I love old maps, where everything’s squashed together. Reminded me, doing this, of the pure creativity of making art as a kid with the cynicism of adulthood in biro added later.

2011-09-20T05:24:00.001-07:00

Emblem 150

Information and materials

No extra information.

2011-09-20T05:24:00.000-07:00

Emblem 149

Information and materials

TITLE: THE RAINBOW EARTH: LIFE, LOVE & NATURE

SYNOPIS: ABSTRACT SNAPSHOTS OF THE THINGS MAN CAN’T ESCAPE:

BIRTH/ RIVERS/ TREE GROWTH RINGS

CELLS/ MOUNTAIN/ BIRD FEATHERS

SEA/ STEPS/ WAVE

LEAVES

DESERT/ SUN/ WHEAT

LOVE/ MALE/ BEACH

LAVA/ CAVE PAINTING/ SPERM.

MEDIUM: MARBLED ACRYLIC ON PAPER WITH GLOSS VARNISH.

2011-09-20T05:23:00.000-07:00

Emblem 148

Information and materials

Heeding Sterne’s ‘motto’ I sought inspiration in what lay hidden, scavenging sleeplessly far & wide. At the point of exhaustion things at last became clear.

In accordance with the oldest traditions, I floated the regimented weave off a section of the paper, combed it line by line with the finest brush & having let it settle under the sweet breeze of late summer – fanned gently by hand – re-set it in the leaf.

2011-09-20T05:20:00.000-07:00

Emblem 147

Information and materials

In collaboration with my daughter. One black on black and this one white on a grubby white. Same as it ever was.

2011-09-20T05:19:00.000-07:00

Emblem 146

Information and materials

Watercolour on Paper

2011-09-20T05:18:00.001-07:00

Emblem 145

Information and materials

Collage

Two emblems by George Wither (1634) which hang on the walls of my former home.

Though the meaning of the verses is similar, the images show contrary and complementary events, and are arranged like an hourglass or infinity symbol, to mirror the continual cycle of growth and decay, reaping and sowing, and the turning seasons.

The Georgian brooch, an ouroboros surrounding an apple tree, is of great sentimental value, and also seems to prefigure a large part of my work and the life in which I now find myself.

Amor et labor

2011-09-20T05:18:00.000-07:00

Emblem 144

Information and materials

I knew at once, when I saw a reproduction of this figure, emerging from the stone, or returning to it, that it was something I had long been familiar with; that, in fact, it, or something like it, had haunted all my work. The book in which I found it describes it as a ‘praying figure’, but the hands could equally be raised in horror. My son David transferred the image onto the sheet provided.

2011-09-20T05:17:00.000-07:00

Emblem 143

Information and materials

Pencil drawing on paper with, in the shape of the number 2, a printed scan of the marbled page from my first edition of Tristram Shandy.

2011-09-20T05:16:00.001-07:00

Emblem 142

Information and materials

Because the places I’ve been to and experiences I’ve had comprise my life and work, I decided to make the piece from pieces of my own. They are mementos, ephemera which I cannot bear to get rid of in a clear-out, but ones which are essentially worthless without the memories I’ve attached to them. I hope they will find a new life as part of something which can be enjoyed by others who are not bound by such sentimentality to these journeys.

I think Sterne would have appreciated the pieces of text, symbols and numerals obfuscating the central message itself, appropriated from him. Some of the objects will be familiar to others; I’ve always felt that creative work is full of small clues about its creator, a sort of code, and none more intriguingly so as when those creators are anonymous….

2011-09-20T05:16:00.000-07:00

Emblem 141

Information and materials

I used watercolour and three dry brushes – 14, 10, and 8 (pony hair). My original ideas and earliest attempts, used the shape and name of rivers important to me – the Severn, the Suir, the Tawe, the Thames – but simpler is usually the better – so it all came down to this. The line is from a long poem called ‘The Source’.

2011-09-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

Emblem 140

Information and materials

Maybe we see a portrait of Laurence Sterne. In any case we can see some of his marbled & important thoughts, which are leaving his brains beyond his wig.

Technique: Acrylic on Somerset paper

2011-09-19T08:56:00.000-07:00

Emblem 139

Information and materials

A whiskery lion and rose – wood engraving

2011-09-19T08:50:00.000-07:00

Emblem 138

Information and materials

Waverley nib; Indian ink; magic pencil; watercolour.

This little picture is dedicated to the memory of Brian Robb, friend & mentor & creator of (in my view) the best set of illustrations to Tristram Shandy.

2011-09-19T08:48:00.000-07:00

Emblem 137

Information and materials

Inkjet print of photographs of lichen on road signs

2011-09-19T08:46:00.000-07:00

Emblem 136

Information and materials

My working 'method':

Write, rewrite, correct, go back, make same mistake, rewrite, cross out, give up, come back, keep going, rewrite, correct, realise, abandon, return, resolve.

Materials:

Blank paper, coloured felt tip pens, pencils, Rexel staples

2011-09-19T08:41:00.000-07:00

Emblem 135

Information and materials

Black ink. I have no other information to provide.

2011-09-19T08:35:00.000-07:00

Emblem 134

Information and materials

Vesti la Giubba is the tragic aria of the clown (alias poor Yorick) in I Pagliacci, Mascagni’s popular one act opera. Usually translated as On with the Motley (to use the conventional rather than Shandean spelling) it refers to the clown’s dressing up yet again to amuse the crowd even though his heart is breaking. The motley used here is from the marble page provided (in two sizes) to make the musical stave with the suggestion of random notes. I often think (although my heart is seldom breaking) of the clown’s ‘on with the greaspaint’ (which is part of the motley) when setting out my palette with colours for the day; and music is always at the centre of my enterprise.

Collage, pencil, watercolour have been used though the main feature of the work is recycling, a constant aspect of what I try to do…

2011-09-19T06:27:00.000-07:00

Emblem 133

Information and materials

“Asterisk”, created for ‘The Emblem of my Work’ uses antiquated dry-transfer lettering applied one at a time to create a melancholy emblem of the passing of time. Once ubiquitous in business and graphic design, dry-transfer lettering is now a cultural artefact denigrated to artistic production. Using only full-stops, dashes and asterisks, “Asterisk” celebrates the absence, the unstated, the censored and the long-forgotten.

For art in the age of mechanical reproduction, the forgotten is “The Emblem of my Work.”

2011-09-19T06:25:00.000-07:00

Emblem 132

Information and materials

Hand-crafted marbled paper.

India ink.

Long friction and Shandean incumbition

2011-09-18T13:15:00.000-07:00

Emblem 131

Information and materials

Rubber stamp

Ink pad

& an air of Authority

2011-09-18T13:14:00.000-07:00

Emblem 130

Information and materials

Commentary:

(Sterne’s parenthesis, anagrammed as my hope for ultimate absorption into anonymous tradition: ‘bow’ as onstage gesture, and as Art)

There follow anagrams of seventeen titles from my work, listed chronologically, each anagram accurate to one or other aspect of the work itself.

its sequence of effect. We could have a ‘quatrain’:

O Menace, O Fright

of eco-nightmare

Ace moon-freight

of magic thereon

its central process of human transformation

its female lead embodies its title metaphor in drastic sense

its meaning; with shift of one word (‘not’ to precede ‘ashore’), its story-line

as it suggests, the old gods bide their hour

the suppressed letter, not present in its title, would make visible the taboo that is its theme

i.e we the audience do

as its protagonist will surely have been

so he surprisingly becomes

she is

its principal process

could have been an image in his Ken Russell film

his schooling, repression: their fruit his distinctive art, often with religious overtone

my sentiment exactly

------ a rather Genetesque one in fact

what, in his last line, the play’s creature promises to do

he is

LAST WORDS OF Tristram Shandy DONE IN GREEK

2011-09-18T08:38:00.001-07:00

Emblem 129

Information and materials

Marbling by Lucy Stewart aged 12

Words by W.B. Yeats.

2011-09-18T08:38:00.000-07:00

Emblem 128

Information and materials

“Who were you?” Initialled answers.

These hand-drawn pencil monographs of nineteenth century people, possibly made for the crest on the family silver, are enigmatic. The letters remind me of a play by Dodie Smith, “Dear Octopus”, in which there is no escape from relationships. Novelists of course weave their own fantasies – and realities. The monograph artist had to show pride and confidence in his labyrinthine statement. Gradually over the generations the crest would be smoothed from sight by polishing. I found these initials in an old box. They could be German. One of the reasons for engraving silver was to make it unusable in someone else’s house, or to be claimed if stolen. Wedding-gift silver would be entwined with the initials of bride and groom and would become heirlooms. The most entwined marriage initials are possibly Henry VIII & Anne Boleyn in King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. They are everywhere.

2011-09-18T08:36:00.000-07:00

Emblem 127

Information and materials

Porcelain, paper, water, rolling pin, knife, paint brush, iron oxide, hands + heat.

I make these ‘labels’ as a verbal record of a visual object. They name the basic material, ingredients that create colour, texture, surface. Yet a gulf divides the two – the words & symbols can’t begin to evoke the visual effects brought about by chance, temperature, atmosphere. But for me they retain an image in the mind’s eye of the first time I saw it.

2011-09-16T05:29:00.002-07:00

Emblem 126

Information and materials

Uniball pen

2011-09-16T05:29:00.001-07:00

Emblem 125

Information and materials

Paper, Printer Ink, a computer and thousands of years of Western Musical Theory.

By chance, the opening bars of a new score soon to be an ancient code.

Perhaps they are.....

2011-09-16T05:29:00.000-07:00

Emblem 124

Information and materials

Ink and watercolour

Today this tree with face is the motley ‘emblem of my work’. Its randomness and lack of meaning is – as far as I can see – in keeping with Tristram Shandy’s marbled emblem.

2011-09-16T05:28:00.001-07:00

Emblem 123

Information and materials

Methods/Materials:

Acrylic paint on card stock. One page of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay ‘American Scholar’ that includes a Emerson’s citing of Shakespeare’s Hamlet was photocopied onto off-white card stock. Black acrylic paint was applied onto the photocopy in a manner similar reminiscent of Rauschenberg’s Untitled (Asheville Citizen). The cardstock was then affixed to the page using double-sided tape.

2011-09-16T05:28:00.000-07:00

Emblem 122

Information and materials

No extra information.

2011-09-16T05:27:00.002-07:00

Emblem 121

Information and materials

Purbeck Marble

(a marble in name only)

23 1/2 ct. gold leaf

& the right kind of light.

2011-09-16T05:26:00.003-07:00

Emblem 120

Information and materials

Button and threads

Title: 'Button Down'

2011-09-16T05:26:00.002-07:00

Emblem 119

Information and materials

Printed by Francis McKee

Photography by Francis McKee

Taken in June 2011 at Glasgow City Chambers

2011-09-16T05:26:00.001-07:00

Emblem 118

Information and materials

Materials used: edding 55pen; laptop (MacBook pro); Venice and environs; memories of the pigmentation on my father’s hands; brains

(This Emblem is on two pages - the transcription beneath is of the second page)

Funny thing, humour.

In Sterne, we study it.
To find out why it was funny once.
The half-life of jokes.

The dictionary’s identity parade

of suspect suspects.

(For example, ‘fool’.
Very deceptive.)

Funny word, ‘funny’.

Pretty peculiar.
Peculiar word, ‘pretty’. Very.

My father’s hands before he died.
Cartographic. Boundaries. Edges.
Uncertain of the destination,
or what was sea
and which was land.
Or what the pigment meant.
He was the map.
And the map knew where it was going.

2011-09-16T05:26:00.000-07:00

Emblem 117

Information and materials

I have used a ‘wet on wet’ process, with intense liquid watercolour on 638 gsm Saunders Waterford.

The ink travels in a way that is controlled but random, wandering, meandering, diverting, returning – following but not following the direction of travel.

For me, the marble page is already a journey, unpredictable, open and fluid.

2011-09-16T05:25:00.000-07:00

Emblem 116

Information and materials

This motley emblem has been marbled by hand in ways very similar to those used in Sterne's time. Gouache colours were floated on a tray containing prepared carragheen, a viscous liquid which supports the paints as they are thrown upon it. Wanting the pattern to be an integral part of the paper and not purely a tip-in, particular care was taken when transferring the image from the liquid size onto the paper. With just a single page there was no room for error & it was a relief to create what had been visualised, the marbled page perfectly fitted the printed frame. This particular marbled design is based upon a specific pattern of the later C18th known as 'Antique Spot'. Indeed it is an emblem of my work.

2011-09-16T05:24:00.002-07:00

Emblem 115

Information and materials

Chinese ink and rice paper with an ancient Japanese technique called Suminagashi, which we can find a page in the collections of 36 Heian poets called “Hongannji-bon Sanjurokunin-kashu”. According to the reliable scholar the page contains Suminagashi is from circa 1,100. The technique is possibly the oldest surviving marbling.

Upon returning to Tokyo from New York, that was 50 years ago, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Yoko Ono’s first husband, told me that George Maciunas was the guy who made paintings with floating oil paints on a water filled bath tub and by spreading a canvass on the tub, which enabled George to create a painting very quick and easily.

Suminagashi is similar but not exactly the same. However, both Suminagashi and Maciunas’s instant paintings are based on the spirit of DADA, complete reliance upon the aleatory.

2011-09-16T05:24:00.001-07:00

Emblem 114

Information and materials

Rubber stamp

2011-09-16T05:24:00.000-07:00

Emblem 113

Information and materials

- Pencil

- Acrylic paint

- 2 dreams

2011-09-16T05:23:00.000-07:00

Emblem 112

Information and materials

False Memory

Watercolour / customised foil sticker.

2011-09-16T05:21:00.000-07:00

Emblem 111

Information and materials

One clay marble

2011-09-15T09:33:00.003-07:00

Emblem 110

Information and materials

Indian Ink

only

and a chance

slap!!

ALL IS ACCIDENT!

2011-09-15T09:33:00.002-07:00

Emblem 109

Information and materials

Voice, sound spectrograph and digital printer. The words ‘’Alas Poor Yorick’’ were transformed into this picture using a computer. Low frequencies are to the left, high to the right. Time is top to bottom. Intensity is blue-red-white.

On close inspection you will notice the emphasis of the ‘SSSS’ from Alas, in the top event; the ‘P’ from poor, in the middle; and the broadband ‘K’ as a separate event from ‘Yorick’.

2011-09-15T09:33:00.001-07:00

Emblem 108

Information and materials

pen & ink & watercolour

2011-09-15T09:33:00.000-07:00

Emblem 107

Information and materials

Staedtler pigment liner 2.0

Quotation from King Lear IV.VI.55

This quotation guides my work as a lifelong learning practitioner working across the life course using philosophy and literature.

2011-09-15T09:32:00.000-07:00

Emblem 106

Information and materials

DEATH’S HEAD HAWKMOTH

Acherontia atropos

(Linnaeus, 1758)

Photographed in the etymology room of Canna House by **** on the afternoon of 9/6/2011.

Canna House is on the Isle of Canna in the Scottish Inner Hebrides and is the home of John Lorne Campbell’s collection of Lepidoptera.

The Death’s Head Hawkmoth is very scarce in Scotland with only one or two sightings each year.

2011-09-15T09:30:00.002-07:00

Emblem 105

Information and materials

Pen and blue-black ink

Pen and violet ink

Pen and royal blue ink

Pen and brown ink

Four pens, four inks –

My idea of modern alternative to marbling.

2011-09-15T09:30:00.001-07:00

Emblem 104

Information and materials

Pen and Ink

2011-09-15T09:30:00.000-07:00

Emblem 103

Information and materials

Colour Xerox of the well-known painting Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman (1865), by William Powell Frith. Green, blue, orange, yellow and pink markers to ‘marble’ the painting, as it were. The painting is incomplete here, for certain, as it would not have fit, in its entirety, in page 169, as it is.

2011-09-15T09:29:00.001-07:00

Emblem 102

Information and materials

Gestural composition: ink and Letraset

2011-09-15T09:29:00.000-07:00

Emblem 101

Information and materials

Being a composer who uses traditional notation in my works, I decided to pick out the ‘blobs’ on the original plate that resembled most closely the size of note heads.

This gave me a rising pattern of dots, which I coloured in s gradually rising lightening colour ‘scale’.

The dark passages on the original I intimated in order to give a slight feeling of depth.

I was recently in Paris, where I bought my materials. I used Faber-Castell colour pencils and Stabilo fineliners.

2011-09-15T09:15:00.001-07:00

Emblem 100

Information and materials

‘as plainly as if every point of it was made up of sunbeams’

- Tristram Shandy. Ch.20.

This pattern known as ‘TIGERS EYE’ is one of my favourites, partly because it is a very variable pattern to create & so more rewarding when it finally works!

It dates from the early nineteenth century. There are various old recipes for it some involving dried blood or creolin! I used potash with the paint to get this effect.

Pattern 2 (not on display)

This is an old historic pattern known as ‘stormont’, popular during the time Tristram Shandy was written.

The addition of oil to the water based paints breaks up the pattern to create a lacey effect.

2011-09-15T09:15:00.000-07:00

Emblem 99

Information and materials

The plot outline of my novel drawn with ashes left over from the draft I threw in the fire.

2011-09-15T09:14:00.000-07:00

Emblem 98

Information and materials

Bait Shed

Square-corrugated sheeting

they use for industrial estates

has been cut into a shed that stands out

like a sawn up caravan

among wooden improvisations.

This dwelling frames no view.

How you get into its dark matters:

a driftwood arbour,

with inflatable life-jackets

like large wine-skins

hung from stripped branches,

leads to a Romanesque

buffalo skull-arch over a door

horned with driftwood tusks.

The outside is dangerous with silence.

There are many people in there

and no one. Behind the shed

the shale cliff rises like a wave.

Bait Shed is part of a new collection of poems about the North Yorkshire coast between Filey Brigg in the South and Skinningrove in the North. The poems were commissioned by Art Connections as part of their Extending Practice Celebrating Place series of commissions. Bait Shed is part 3 of a three poem sequence of poems set at Port Mulgrave.

2011-09-15T09:13:00.000-07:00

Emblem 97

Information and materials

Every one of Sterne’s marbled pages is different and unique, and yet they are all the same – a bit like days in our lives. This concept reminded me of the ‘find it’ game: a see-through plastic tube of about the size of a packet of Pringles. It does not open, and inside are thousands of little plastic bits like larger ‘hundreds & thousands’, mixed with a few bigger items. You have to turn and shake the tube to half-reveal the items and guess what they are, but you can never find all the ones that are supposed to be in there, as some are permanently buried. So, every time you shake & turn it looks different and cannot be reproduced in exactly the same way – and yet it is all the same….

I took a blurred close-up photo of a section of the game and added the ‘chrome’ photoshop filter. This turned it into a (sadly monochrome) marbled page. Like Sterne’s marbled pages it is double-sided.

2011-09-13T06:23:00.001-07:00

Emblem 96

Information and materials

This b+w photo is an early test print for the photographic piece ‘Concrete Autumn (Phantom Tree)’ 2005.

It shows a ghostly image of a concrete tree made as 1 of 4 trees for a garden by Robert Mallet Stevens in 1925. The concrete trees were made by the sculptors Jan and Joel Martel.

The photo piece was the first work that introduced the tree into my practice. Since 2005 almost every work has made reference to the component shapes and forms of the original concrete tree.

2011-09-13T06:23:00.000-07:00

Emblem 95

Information and material

My inspiration: marbles of Italy.

Marble is a ‘living stone’, a bit like alabaster. It can be very dramatic in its expressiveness, always pleasing to the eye, mysterious. It can be more noble, grander than what it is used for, in architecture or sculpture. Marble quarries are mysterious places, where uniquely beautiful stone silently gives in to human lust, greed, desire, need.

Ideally, this marbled page should be white, as marble can be in its purest state.

For my image I used watercolours, water soluble pencils and gouache. I then varnished it, as polished marble reveals its beauty to the full.

2011-09-13T06:22:00.001-07:00

Emblem 94

Information and materials

When I began to write I was prolix. One day the filmmaker, Bill Douglas, advised me to cut an entire scene. If you write something and take it out, he said, readers will know it (even if they haven’t read it) because your remaining words will be freighted with a sense of what you’ve cut; they’ll imply it. He was right, and I’ve followed his counsel ever since. That’s why I’ve drawn an iceberg. The tip above the surface suggests the greater bulk hidden below. That’s my emblem, at least of my practice when I write. I drew in pencil and coloured in with crayon. The fish in my first (draft) attempt doesn’t read. The fish in the finished one is better. I signed using the pen (a Mont Blanc) I write with.

2011-09-13T06:22:00.000-07:00

Emblem 93

Information and materials

This is a wood engraving.

Everything else is clear…

2011-09-13T06:21:00.001-07:00

Emblem 92

Information and materials

* (Footnote)

Too late (perhaps) for me to warn you

of these poems being irreverent or obscure,

but if the latter is true, do please refer

to the plentiful notes where you’ll find

(I can assure you) nothing

but facts (facts) and more facts.

There are also the pictures to compensate

or distract, and you have not (as yet)

committed yourself (financially at least)

to the inevitable sequel coming into view

from the aeroplane window (scratched

with stars): the ice floes’ marbled page

and tomorrow (fingers crossed)

from the hi-rise conference hotel, asterisks

waving in the clear Hawaiian sky.

2011-09-13T06:21:00.000-07:00

Emblem 91

Information and materials

French sepia ink & pen

Marble page – marble mask

2011-09-13T06:20:00.001-07:00

Emblem 90

Information and materials

The only function of an envelope interior is to hide the contents of the envelope.

The mundane and ephemeral quality of these detailed patterns which are usually just thrown out without being noticed has interested me for more than 16 years now. The highlights of my Envelope Interior Collection has been the Fast Disappearing Air Mail Envelope. The patterning is seen both inside the envelope and through the envelope’s translucent lightweight paper. Airmail envelopes always suggest the outside world. Airmail envelopes always suggest the romance of the Far-Away.

This Interior, from the American Chamber of Commerce in Luxembourg is a prize piece in the collection. This laser reproduction becomes an emblem of some of the things we are losing.

2011-09-13T06:20:00.000-07:00

Emblem 89

Information and materials

Image-making of all kinds is often a result of some kind of pigment in suspension: the marbled page was created by a pattern of resistance by colours while suspended on a meniscus of water.

My work is primarily about the push and pull of tides and I have used watercolours and pigmented inks to create these opposing flows. In my alternative life as a fish I variously resist or exploit these currents: hence the fish appearing in white gouache.

2011-09-13T06:19:00.000-07:00

Emblem 88

Information and materials

No further information.

2011-09-13T06:18:00.001-07:00

Emblem 87

Information and materials

Detail from a fabric design, 2011

Marker pens. Watercolour

2011-09-13T06:18:00.000-07:00

Emblem 86

Information and materials

No further information.

2011-09-13T06:17:00.000-07:00

Emblem 85

Information and materials

"Geometry existed before the Creation" Plato

Pen and Ink

Pencil

Gouache

2011-09-13T06:16:00.000-07:00

Emblem 84

Information and materials

Paper marbling has taxed and absorbed me for many years, giving me great pleasure in its creation. I work with traditional Western and Oriental materials and techniques and am amazed at the ways in which ‘the truths which are seen beneath its dark veil’ are further developed by designer bookbinders.

Cream paper is marbled with acrylics using the traditional ‘Stormont’ technique when turpentine is added to the last colour thrown onto the bath to create a speckled effect which pushes the previous colours into veins.

Stone coloured paper is marbled with casein black, yellow and brown, feathered, then rippled when laying down the paper creating a three-dimensional appearance.

2011-09-13T06:15:00.001-07:00

Emblem 83

Information and materials

"The Emblem of My Work"

2011

Ink on paper

21 x 15cm

2011-09-13T06:15:00.000-07:00

Emblem 82

Information and materials

The material is the English language; one starting-point being the excerpts garnered in the OED under the entry ‘translation, n.’ (Translation is the EMBLEM, if I must have one, of my poetics.) Other than that: a swap from Basil Bunting floated into my mind; there are obvious loans (o, all right, thefts) from other versions of Horace, Odes III. XXX – specifically by the Rev.H.P.Houghton, a former chief executive of Royal Doulton named Stuart Lyons, and a surprisingly poor version by Ezra Pound. There are some bad puns, and a couple of borrowings from R.G.M. Nisbet & Niall Rudd’s Commentary on Horace, Odes, Book III. I took a hint from Pushkin’s Russifying of the poem and lifted verbatim a line from Marx’s Capital, Vol.1, sat close by one of his many quotations from Horace.

The rest I just made up. (Ah! Inspiration…’)

The poem is for Gavin Selerie, lector.

2011-09-13T06:14:00.001-07:00

Emblem 81

Information and materials

- red paper

- black ink

- blameless llamas

2011-09-13T06:14:00.000-07:00

Emblem 80

Information and materials

Black Ink

2011-09-13T06:13:00.000-07:00

Emblem 79

Information and materials

‘The game of common etymology makes of writing a cutting movement, a tear, a crisis…

The proper tool for writing was also proper to incising: the stylet… This incisive reminder still invokes a cutting operation, if not a butchery: a kind of violence…’

Maurice Blanchot (1907 - 2003)

2011-09-13T06:12:00.000-07:00

Emblem 78

Information and materials

Photography.

Capturing a turning page of a library book, this photograph reveals two half pages opposing each other.

The right hand side, glances at a female portrait, her full identity is cut away.

The left-hand page interests me more.

This is my emblem – the ‘ghost-like’ mirror imprint.

Revealed by chance, under pressure, this reverse image draws the viewer in question, whilst offering up oblique clues to the woman’s identity, and the historical significance of her life.

Printed on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper.

2011-09-12T08:27:00.000-07:00

Emblem 77

Information and materials

Title: ‘Interior. Uncertain’

text and digital drawing

5^th August 2011

2011-09-12T08:26:00.001-07:00

Emblem 76

Information and materials

Coloured pencil on paper.

2011

The drawing is based upon a comic strip by Charles M Shulz. It was taken from “Snoopy’s Guide to the Writing Life” that I first viewed at Shandy Hall several years ago.

A working title for this drawing is as follows: “Snoopy is a Fictional Character.”

2011-09-12T08:26:00.000-07:00

Emblem 75

Information and materials

My work as of August 9, 2011

2011-09-12T08:25:00.001-07:00

Emblem 74

Information and materials

Scalpel, ruler, cutting mat, craft mount, permanent adhesive, reappropriated magazine cutting, inkjet print, QR CODE GENERATOR via the internet, rapidograph pen with black ink, coloured pencils.

This ‘Emblem’ is constructed as a deliberate connection between past and future works: the goose, the dog and the lesser-spotted flying Turkish goosefish have all appeared in previous works and will be featured in a future digital artwork, to be published in October 2011.

The ‘QR CODE’ in this design takes the form of a tower block, as part of an urban landscape. The towerblock can be scanned, using a mobile device equipped with a ‘QR Reader’. This will lead the viewer to a wider panoramic landscape:

‘H***’S SCROLL OF FROLICKING ANIMALS’

which can be examined on the same mobile device.

2011-09-12T08:25:00.000-07:00

Emblem 73

Information and materials

I don’t remember quite how it happened, but somehow I’ve come to identify myself as a pegdoll. This is not quite as daft as it sounds because I am an illustrator who creates characters for children’s books, and this sort of thing happens a lot. A pegdoll has become shorthand for when I want to identify myself visually, quickly and simply. This is drawn in coloured pencil and watercolour.

I find that collage is one of the best ways to introduce chance into artworks. I didn’t have any marbled paper but I’ve been using Japanese origami papers to make illustrations for The Nightingale, so I’ve made an image using the little left over scrap cuttings on my desk, forming some into figurative shapes. They are like little ideas that spring out of the process of working. They are breaking out of the black frame because they have taken on a life of their own.

2011-09-12T08:24:00.001-07:00

Emblem 72

Information and materials

Glue, collaged comic & newspaper.

An attempt to produce the sort of feelings in the observer that might linger, probably unwanted, in some dusty box-room of the mind.