Numbers

Six seems like a good number to me when I’m printing an edition. Every time I make a lino print, it’s a bit of a gamble: I print using one block of lino and gradually destroy it, cutting it away in order to build the print out of layers of colour. Start with six and, if I’m clever, finish with six. There’s no going back and doing another few copies or idly hitting the button for a fresh batch of giclee printouts. It’s about as close as I get to living dangerously...
However I have just finished a huge, really huge, edition. One hundred and twenty one lovely late summer sunsets thanks to my sort-of-relation Phil and his generosity in letting me into his printworks at Hand and Eye (www.handandeye.co.uk).To print on this scale I had to produce a set of blocks, piecing the image together like a lino jigsaw rather than using the one block. Precision isn’t my middle name and I suspect it’s actually Phil’s first name. It’s a good job neither he nor his team saw my dreadful inexperience at multi block work; the cold sweats and the idiotic mistakes (including a beautifully prepared upside down field) that went into preparing the seven cut blocks that make up the final picture.
The print is still an original linocut print and every print is unique – unique because I painted every one of the 121 sunsets by hand during printing.
But before this sounds too much of a personal success story, I should confess to having access to Rosa.
As secret weapons go, Rosa is pretty impressive, a former restorer of Italian frescos and a fine printer, she mixed my inks and matched colours brilliantly to my somewhat hopeless descriptions: ‘sort of a non-colour: greenish grey – you know, with a bit of red in it probably’ which is hardly a pantone recipe. She also operated the proofing press and helped me print, ha, actually I helped her print and learned a great deal in the process. The finished result costs £70 unframed and you can buy one from me via this link or from Phil at Hand and Eye.