Linocuts

December 2020/January 2021 Prints

This is a series of reduction linocuts I have been making as a way having some fun and experimenting with this technique. I have gone back to using the postage stamp motif for these prints. The square images are about 20x20cm and the others are about 20x26cm.

It is what it is won the Guy Dixon Prize at the Leicester Society of Artists Annual Exhibition 2020.

It is what it is

It is what it is II

Swimmer

An emerging narcissist

Fishing Trip

Italian Folktales

This is a series of prints based the collection of folktales by Italo Calvino.

The prints shown here are:

The Count’s Beard (La barba del Conte).

The peace-loving inhabitants of Pocapoglia were having their cattle stolen by the mysterious witch Micillina. Above town lives an arrogant and aloof count with a long beard. They approach the count for help, but he declines, saying,

“ I am the count and I count for three;
No witch have I seen,
So, no witch has there been.”

So they write to the town’s hero, Masino who has gone off to become a soldier. Masino returns to the town from Africa and after asking the farmers a series of oblique questions, exposes the count to be the witch who has been using his long beard to disguise himself.

The farmers call for retribution against the count but Masino tells them to spare his life, and instead the count will now clean their barns and bring them firewood. Masino then resumes his travels,

Soldier fighter, what a hard lot!
Wretched food, the ground for a cot.
You feed the cannon powder:
Boom-BOOM! Boom-BOOM! Boom louder!

Cecino e il Bue

While a woman is cooking chickpeas the pot boils over and the chickpeas become a hundred children running around making demands of their “mamma”. The frightened woman gathers them up and crushes them in her mortar. She then regrets having not spared the life of one of them but one called Cecino has hidden. She is very happy to have a son and sends him out to take lunch to his father, a locksmith.

He then has a series of adventures including being eaten by a horse and swallowed by a wolf, ending with him tricking some thieves into discarding their stolen money which he takes home to his parents.

The Land Where One Never Dies

A young man who never wants to die finds a land where he gains immortality, but one day on a journey on his white horse from the land where one never dies, Death tricks him into setting foot on the ground and he dies.

Each print is 32x43cm.

A True History

This series of prints are for an exhibition In a Country Far Away (due to take place June 2018 in Bad Oeynhausen, Germany). The images are a response to “A True History” by the second century writer Lucian of Samosata.

Each image is 25x30cm

Imaginary Beings Series

These linocuts are inspired by the Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges. This is an ongoing project which I began during a residency at www.opificiodellarosa.org in Italy in 2013.

Each image is 25x30cm.