Some projects are longer in the making than you expect. The Panopticon series certainly took some time in development.
I first visited Halo above Haslingden in March 2018 on a bitterly cold day. I'd planned to sketch - but it was way too cold for that, so I took lots of photos from all sorts of angles, exploring the structure for inspiration, preparing to submit a work to the Prospect Printmakers' Pennine-themed exhibition, which opened at the Whitaker Gallery in late April.
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| Halo |
The original Halo edition was only five, however as the linocut was created from three plates, it gave me the opportunity to explore colour ways. I editioned the same plates in new colours for the Hot Bed Press 20:20 Print Exchange in 2018.
A year later I visited the other panopticons - the Singing Ringing Tree, above Burnley, the Atom at Wycoller, and the final one, now closed, in Blackburn's Corporation Park.
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| Singing Ringing Tree |
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| Atom |
I designed the series to work together, on the same paper, with the same colour combinations, to exploit the drama of the landscapes and explore the potential of composition and tones in these linocuts. Two designs are multi-plate: Halo and Singing Ringing Tree, whilst Atom is a reduction.
Below are the images showing the lino plates themselves, stages of the work and the build-up of the layers.
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| 3 of the 4 plates of the Singing Ringing Tree |
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| Printing Singing Ringing Tree layer 1 |
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| Printing Singing Ringing Tree layer 2 |
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| Singing Ringing Tree - building up the image |
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| Stages of the Atom |
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| 2 layers of the Atom |
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| In reduction linocut the plate is destroyed |
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| Printing the penultimate colour of Aton |
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| The Atom emerges |
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| Printing the final reduction layer |
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| The finished edition by Carolyn Murphy |
To learn more about my work, please check out my website www.carolynmurphy.co.uk where you'll find my gallery, online shop and links to my social media.
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