I don't know what's happening to me but I've gone all green !!

UGH what was it that brought this on?.......well I have finally had the time to 'faf' and fiddle about with some files on my computer and to go through some documentation of an exhibition I was in at this time (well slightly earlier October/November) last year i.e., 2006 ( this was in Mieres in Spain, by the way) and so I have been going though the art installation shots of "Ring around the Rosies" and I guess the whole 'green' thing came out of that. Well it is my favourite colour, certainly for wearing.

I also was fed up with my blog header because it was jutting out to the right side of the page, putting things all "out of kilter" and I wanted a 'warmer' feel to my blog. Maybe it's the cold weather - I mean not wanting the 'blueness'. Anyway - so I chose a new template and then started playing around with the hairy print 'semicircs' that I probably love the most, of the stuff from this installation ( by the way that's the central semi circle, in the header above.
Well and then I threw a couple of small details from the "rosies" into that and voila ...there you are.

Wish it was that easy to change the furniture in your house and such like. Wouldn't it be great !!!

I am feeling better than I was - the horrid pain in my leg having abated so thank ee Gawd for that!!! har har har !!!

Bestiary

Bestiarys and such like....I have always loved this kind of exercise as in making a book of animals or beasts which are a kind of hybrid or crossover between humans animals and say....birds to reptiles etc etc. One of the books I have on my shelves is The Book of Beasts which is written by Anne...............and published by the British Library. I cannot remember where or how I came across Briony Morrow-Cribbs, but I like her approach. Her bird human reminded me of an image I made a couple of years back - I actually recently used it in the Aran installation.

Miniprint Finland 2007

Artworks featured from top to bottom:
1. Pirkko Acklin
2. Laura Pohjonen
3. "Anne Makelä
4. Modhir Ahmet






Missed this one this year which is dang...annoying as I particularly wanted to put in a submission. I got a catalog for the 2001 exhibition as I submitted that year but did not get selected. I realized consequently that I had misinterpreted the size requirements.
Anyway I went along to the site and had a look and picked out a few artists whose work interested me for various reasons. There were only two tradigital artist printmakers, namely In Hee Bang and Sigita Dackeviciute.

For an interesting approach to inkjet printing; József Gábos, Pirkko Acklin, and also Kimmo Hakonen.
Theodor Liho and Anne Mäkelä created Intaglio prints that had something quite Interesting about them. I also liked Laura Pohjonen’s hymn book.

Palestine Girl

This is another of the prints that I submitted to the Peacock Christmas Exhibition. It was made originally for an exhibition at the London Print Studio Gallery where I used to go to do my printmaking BEFORE I moved up here to Scotland and of course started using the lovely FDPW

Catching up with myself at Last !!

I really don't feel much up to doing anything much at the moment, mainly because of being at the whim of my shooting nerve pain in my left leg. It's re-asserted itself these past few days and it's very hard going. Even making it difficult to get to sleep or to rest on my sofa which I need to do on and off throughout the day because of the chronic back pain.

Oh it's just bloody awful, I don't even seem to be able to cry tears somehow with the pain, which is kind of weird but perhaps that is a consequence of the medication I am on.

I often wonder whether i should talk about this kind of stuff on here but then it is supposed to be a kind of diary not a Billy Butlin's Holiday camp, for gawds sake!!.

I went to one of those places one time. I was sixteen at the time and such things were a new phenomenon in Ireland, in those days. It was "naff" in a way and I knew it but at the same time because I bumped into this girl on the train on the way up there (we were both "with our families ugh ") and we ended up becoming good friends and having a few laughs together which made it more bearable. That's another story altogether. I am still in touch with her T.. She lives in Cork with her husband and three grown up daughters and even has some grandchildren now. Makes you feel so old.

Not that I need those kind of reminders because with this spinal malfunction I have had, for going on 17 years now, I feel like about 25-30 years older than I am anyway.

This past week I have been going through the final stages of sorting out our boxes of stuff from our "house relocation" from London which is almost a year ago now.

The garage (my studio, from here on in) is almost completed and soon C. will be bringing down the very heavy etching press from it's temporary location in the upstairs office.

He has put up a lot of sturdy shelving on the walls here and has stored quite an amount of art items such as canvases and what not, up in the garage attic which is a smallish space but certainly pretty useful for these items to be out of the way.

I will take some photos of the space at some point to show what it is like in here.

One of the very best things is the big table/work surface on the center of the studio which is made from two old doors. You could have six people sitting round it for a meal - which gives an indication of it's size.

The little image with this post is one of a group of small prints that I sent to the Christmas exhibition at Peacock Printmakers Workshop in Aberdeen. I sent them off almost three weeks ago now and the exhibition will be open to the public by now. I had imagined that I might get myself up to Aberdeen for the opening of the show but the friend ( probable hostess) who resides there is gone away off to Africa for a few weeks and so that put an end to that.
I have visited there previously before TB moved back there, and so I feel an affinity with the place. The print workshop is actually within the Peacock Visual Arts Centre.

Latest suite of Four Prints

Silver Heart Lines
Originally uploaded by ainesse.

Latest suite of Four Prints - made for the Silver anniversary exhibition taking place at the beginning of December near Dunfermline (venue details to follow)
I don't have the size of this piece but its a medium to large size work. I have titled it Lines of the Hear or is it Hear Lines, its connected with the idea of Life lines and the web that is the narrative of our lives. It a secret what it is about , I have my own interpretation. I suppose I can tell you that it is about loss and missing people and well secret identities. It is made using a small amount of digital print as well as the offset of the handmade cobweb that I put through the etching press. I also used the heart hard ground etching, which is one of my favorite recently made etch elements. I have used "mirri card" paper doll like, cut outs too. This is probably my favourite of the four prints I made for this exhibition although "Silver Spoon" is a close contender.