I spent the day playing with monoprints today. I really want to incorporate some of the forest in my trees as directly as possible and so I've got the mud prints but it seems important to include the flora as well.
It's that time of year where everything seems to change on an almost daily basis, I spent what seemed like a month waiting for the bluebells to arrive and then they suddenly peak very quickly and disappear a few days later beneath the rising ferns. The stitchwort is looking amazing and all of a sudden the grasses went from lush and green to full of seeds!
Having collected it and pressed it all last week I couldn't wait any longer to get some ink on it! I tried something new (of course!) I took the first impression which gives deep colour with the plants acting as a stencil so printing white, then I carefully peeled all the plants off and took the next impression, which is always a stunning one, then I took a ghost of this print. I put the inky plants on this print and pressed them back onto this paper. I thought this was rather fascinating - the layering of the 'ghost' plants on the background with the positives darker in the foreground.
I was thinking this could be rather lovely done in two different colours. I am also using some really delicate, spindly grasses from last year that have shed their seeds and are incredibly whispy and beautiful. I've never used them before and am impressed by how robust they are. There's the tale of last year as well as this year in these prints which I rather like.
I got out everything I've made so for for the tree and had a look at it. There's a decent amount there but I still think I need a lot more. Next week I've planned a schedule of final printing which will give me two weeks of stitching which should be perfect. I'm feeling slightly panicky that I should have pulled my finger out soonr with this, but at the same time I wanted the ideas to percolate for as long as possible because I really want to make something that includes as much as it possibly can! I tend to work very fast when I get going and I htink two weeks of solid stitching will be plenty of time. It shouldn't be complicated to do once I get going, I just need to have everything there so I can choose all the best bits. I'm really scared and excited about ripping things up and getting sewing!
I want to print my soap ground etching in a couple more colours to add a little pink and possibly some orange to my tree, I also have a large linocut caustic soda etching underway which will give me a similar effect to the soap ground etching but on different paper. I really want a variety of papers in there as thats a big part of printmaking - I adore trying out all the different papers! I'm trying to get the story of me in there as well as the forest.
I have some test prints of 'Forest Textures' that I want to incorporate. The thing that I'm still not sure about is the concertina 'log book' idea. I think this might be pushing it as I just can't quite figure out what imagery to use for it. I think I might have to let this one go and focus on making the tree(s?!) really well instead. I am going to make it, I just don't think I'll do it justice quite yet.
The tree is now appearing much more clearly in my head. I've realised its a continuation of something I started a while ago but which never really 'went anywhere':
I'd rip and collage little scraps together and make pleasing, small pieces which are in various sketchbooks. I think I expanded this when I did the course with Cas Holmes and made a few collaged pieces which I then over printed:
This is slightly post-rationalised and I think has partly always been there but I'm really seeing the tree as very much a collage piece held together by stitch. I also want to pop some monoprints using the forest flora onto it after it's been collaged together. I think this will have to be done in small pieces so that they go through the press and the whole tree is never going to fit. I'll have to do a test to check that it doesn't damage the look of the piece to be run through the press. I don't want some parts to look particularly flat and others don't.
Way back when I wrote my study statement I envisaged something that pulled everything together and represented the forest and all it's stakeholders. I'm not sure that the piece is going to represent all the forest stakeholders any more, the more I have researched 'place' the more I become convinced I cannot speak for anyone else as I can only offer up my feelings about and experience of the forest alongside visual representations of the facts I have learned about it.
This is why the monoprints have become so important to the piece, they represent the deep looking and the close study of the minutae of the forest over time. The huge log piles and muddy tracks you'd think are obvious to everyone, but they are in a different place every year and the forest is so huge that you might well miss them. Who else noticed the stitchwort appearing or the orange on the beech tree trunks? Who records the way the grasses change in colour, shape and sound throughout the year? Who remembers the time so much rain fell overnight that one of the drainage pipes couldn't quite cope and created the most amazing gurgling sounds as the water air-locked and was sucked back and forth and so is now called 'the gurgly pipe'? There's also 'Lizard Alley' named for all the lizards we spotted during lockdown. These names and experiences probably mean nothing to others but they record my family's experience of our bit of the forest.
In another part of the forest there's a 'stone snake' which demanded much collecting and painting of stones to add to it a couple of years ago, I was impressed to see it was left well alone by the forestry workers this year when that part of the forest was clear felled. There's a particular tree which gets adorned with baubles every christmas and another which must once have stood at the boundary to the (now) royal residence of Bagshot Park as it has part of an old wrought iron fence that it has engulfed as it's grown, now the only evidence of the fence.
I find I am building up an encyclopedia of my own experience of the forest. Some parts I've been walking in since I was 13 and we moved to a house down the road from the entrance. When my dog disappeared for ages chasing a deer it reminded me of a similar experince in the same place with Mutley, the family cocker spaniel, nearly 30 years ago. Other parts are much newer to me and I've only visited once or twice - Caesars Camp, an iron age hill fort is right over on the far side of the forest and I want to make work about that at some point, but I need to familiarise myself with it much better, similarly the Devils Highway, a roman road needs some attention at some point.
The overriding this that amazes me about the forest is how different it is throughout. You can go from a barren, cleared area to a densely wooded beautiful stream surrounded by blubells within a 15 minute walk. The east side in Ascot side has little water, the northern Bracknell part none at all. South in Bagshot there's a lake and several streams (best place for summer dog walking!) it's also the only part thats designated ancient woodland and full of bluebells, yet there was an ironage settlement in the northern part. I want to get all of this into the piece for the exhibition which might not be possible, but I'm going to try. I think a lot of it will be lost on other people, but the important thing for me is tha I know it's in there. By making sure that the work is authentic I can be proud of it and it will be better, even of no one else can see exactly what I can see in it I hope that I will be able to communicate a message about the variety of possibilities waiting to be discovered both in printmaking and in the forest within the piece.