Behind the Scenes on 'September Evening'

For this year's 20:20 print exchange I decided to capture a familiar and favourite view. It's one I've seen a lot of during recent lockdowns and on a warm, summer evening, it's hard to beat. Nothing exotic - it's the view to the west from our own backyard in Manchester. Our own little space, haven and outside space. From here we have watched the bats and the International Space Station fly over regularly. The shared garden behind has mature trees, hedgehog residents and an insect hotel, amongst other things.

I've included below some reference photos I took - both day and evening to guide me:

One of the trickiest challenges was how to take the image over the edges of the paper and register consistently. Thank you to printmakers on Facebook's Linocut Friends site for suggestions and tips! I finally went for face down registration - using a basic template. 

I then started by testing gradation colours, to explore how best to create a good illusion of twilight. After deciding on a composition and what to include and leave out, I finalised the design and transferred it to the lino in pencil. The cutting was fairly intricate - especially the section with the leaves. You can see some work in progress shots here:

Trying alternative colours

Starting to cut the lino plate

The tree section starts to emerge

Initial cutting completed

From here I proofed the plate in the my chosen colour way, removed and refined elements to clean up the image. Once I was happy with a proof image, it was time to print the full 20:20 edition of 25 for Prospect Printmakers submissions.

First rough proof

Later proof

One of the challenges I spotted late was that printing right to the edges means you can't peg prints up, which is my normal route. Maybe I finally need to look at flat drying racks after all! In the meantime, I have all the edition drying on the studio floor. And the gorgeous studio cat is temporarily banned! This is how the edition developed:

The gradation - printed from a plain lino block

Printing the edition

The finished linocut edition - drying on the floor

The plate and the image together

Creating my new Panopticon series

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.

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.

Singing Ringing Tree

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.

3 of the 4 plates of the Singing Ringing Tree

Printing Singing Ringing Tree layer 1 

Printing Singing Ringing Tree layer 2

Singing Ringing Tree - building up the image

Stages of the Atom

2 layers of the Atom 

In reduction linocut the plate is destroyed

Printing the penultimate colour of Aton

The Atom emerges 

Printing the final reduction layer

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.

'That Window' at Towneley Hall

Printmakers from Alan Birch's Prospect Studio workshops were asked to create new work inspired by Towneley Hall in Burnley an exhibition called 'Impressions: A Printmaking Response to Towneley'.

The exhibition was due to open in April 2020, however the opening was delayed, like so many things in 2020, owing to the coronavirus pandemic.

The journey began for me in January 2020, when I visited Towneley Hall for the first time. It's set in stunning parklands and, even on a bitterly cold January day, the gardens were busy with local families out for a stroll. This window, in particular, caused much amusement with local children - and caught my interest as a result.

Towneley Hall in Burnley

The window - from inside

The window from outside at Towneley

Back at Prospect Studio, I worked up the image into a 2 plate linocut, which after a number of trials, I decided to print in gold and green.

This became my 'cheeky' submission to the 'Impressions' exhibition. 

'That Window' an original linocut by Carolyn Murphy

I visited the exhibition in September 2020 and loved the quality and quirkiness of the work from all the Prospect Printmakers who took part. I had the chance to view the exhibition in the next gallery, which included local watercolours by Turner. It was a fantastic day out, between phases of Covid-19 lockdown - and fantastic to see the exhibition and Hall so well supported by the whole community.

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.

The Best Art Experience of 2018?

Yesterday the Prospect Printmakers had special access to the vaults underneath Manchester Art Gallery with the curator, Kate Jesson. What a fantastic evening! We got to pick a selection of boxes of prints to see what was inside. We chose a wide selection, including unmarked boxes, and were lucky enough to see work not currently on show. We viewed works by Graham Sutherland and Japanese woodblock artists, amongst many others. 

Opening archive boxes in the vaults

The curator and a Piranesi design

Fabulous image - "after" Van Dyck

Graham Sutherland print

Utagawa Toyokuni woodcut

Hokusai - The Hanging Bridge

Liam Spencer painting

The vaults under Manchester Art Gallery

One of the real surprises was learning about the 'Manchester Corporation Rutherston Loan Collection' which allowed the people of Manchester to borrow pieces of art for their homes, like books from the library. What a superb idea!

It was truly a magical evening and great to go under the building to see the parts you usually only see on TV! Amongst the racking I also spotted a Liam Spencer oil painting, that surely should be on show!

To see my own work, please check out my website: www.carolynmurphy.co.uk where you will also find an online Shop with currently available work. Thanks!

The Pennines and the Halo!

On Saturday 21 April 2018 a new exhibition of artworks by Prospect Printmakers will open at The Whitaker Art Gallery and Museum in Rawtenstall, Rossendale. It's inspired by the Pennines, the theme that unites the work of almost 20 artists in a range of printmaking techniques.

My new linocut 'Halo' was created for this exhibition and will be displayed alongside one piece of work from each of the Prospect Studios printmakers involved.

  

There's an Opening on Saturday 21 April 2 - 4pm at the Whitaker. All are very welcome.  I hope you can make it to the Opening or to the Exhibition itself, which runs until 17 June. Our small show runs alongside Liam Spencer's new exhibition 'Home & Away' in the main gallery space of the Whitaker.

I've outlined below some of the behind the scenes story of the making of this particular piece.

'Halo' refers to Haslingden Halo, an 18m diameter steel structure, sited on an exposed spot above the town, to mark the regeneration of East Lancashire. I hadn't visited it before working on this Pennine theme, but was interested in the juxtaposition of this large industrial-looking art sculpture and the barren moorland landscape. The Halo is lit at night too, giving it an other-worldly floating look.

The day I visited, I'd planned to make a number of sketches. It turned out to be in early March, during the snowy period and it was icy cold, windy and threatening to rain or snow any moment! I ended up walking the site and viewing the structure from all sides and taking reference images, before dashing for the car. I loved the shadows, the contrasts, the light. These are some of the photos I took:

Haslingden Halo with its shadows

The Halo looking alien in its landscape

Fantastic light and shade

Threatening weather

It was really in an exposed spot and I wanted to capture some of that sense of a big Pennine landscape. I decided to create the image from 3 lino plates, so that I could come back to the image and explore different colour ways. I cut the image from traditional lino 21 cm x 21 cm.

This is my first proof of the print:

First rough proof

From here, I made some changes to the colours and also cleaned up each plate further, cutting away stray marks. I was aiming for a more dramatic final image to reflect the light and shade, the storm clouds brewing and the warmth in the landscape.

I don't have images of every stage, but you can see that I've introduced a red/brown bracken colour and darkened the clouds. This is the print after printing just the first plate:

Printing plate 1

I have ended up with a small edition, which will be for sale at the Exhibition and later (unframed) on my website. I was printing this at the same time as drying my Macmillan giant linocuts and starting to work on new designs for my greetings cards. I'm definitely short of drying space!

 

Need more drying rack space!
 

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.