I am back after the onslaught of the deadly virus!!

I put a print through my etching press this evening and that is the proof to me that I am OK and back in action -- this time last week it was a very different picture. I was just utterly miserable with feverishness and a dull continuous ache in my lower abdomen.

It was hard to do anything at all. I was weakened by the blasted bug and it was dominating me. It really was not a case of snapping out of it or mind over matter.
I had had something like this whilst on my Masters course in Barcelona. That was called gasto enteristus which I guess just means stomach flu. Although back then I don't think I had the feverishness although I had diahorea and the stomach pain. I had to eat bananas hard boiled eggs and rice for the whole 2 weeks. Can you imagine the dullness of that. At least this time I was able to eat normally although I was definitely somewhat off my food these past 2 weeks. A lot more picky and not feeling I could face this or that kinds of foods.

I should add that the image included in this post is from a google search I did (on Nostradamus ) to put together an announcement for artistsbooks ning dot com website.
Here is a link to where I found the image as it would take too long to explain its origin.

6 Sides 2 Every Story

Here is a project that I have become recently involved in. I fairly recently requested a wooden cube from Candace Nicol, project initiator, based in Nevada, USA and am now co ordinating some of my fellow printmakers at FDPW to carve onto the remaining five sides.

Wish me luck, as it's a pretty small cube !! which is quite challenging in more ways than one.

Fife and Dunfermline Printmakers participating are Maria Ginnerup, Sheila Carnduff
Lindsay Perth, Alison Leeper, Catherine King, formerly mentioned here on my blog re her large collagraphs shown in FDPW's 25th Silver anniversary exhibition at the Kirkaldy museum, about this time last year.

Sharron Coffin

Somehow or other I ended up on the New England Monotype Guild's website recently and I really liked this image by an artist called Sharon Coffin.


I think it is for the nature of the image itself as well as the sparcity in the sense that it didn't really have an edge. I had to impose that be adding a visual thin black frame.

The other monotype of Sharron's, that I quite was/is the one here with the darker palette of blues. I found the initial image in the Guild's 20th Anniversary exhibition which is online at their website. The blue image I located at Sharon's own website.






You can check out more of her work at her website



There was one other image which I found to be really calming, relaxing and just very visually appealing was that of a face and a turtle perhaps(?) underwater. Its by an artist called Linda Horvitz Post. More of her work can be seen on her Saatchi website portfolio

Legs Akimbo...........................

It's been a while since I posted as to how things have been. Well I am still using a crutch to get around. I have of course tried from time to time, to do a stretch of distance without it to see how I am and it's just completely impossible for me to 'walk' without it. I kind of hobble, with my left leg jutting out towards the left and as if one leg is shorter than the other. Its an awful site and it feels painful in a way thats difficult to describe. My left leg is gone numb in the foot area (as if it is dead) and the same goes for the front part of my lower leg, all the way down.



The pain is still there as well but not to the extreme levels as in up to about even three weeks ago. I have fallen twice here in the house whilst on my crutches and although the first one was quite bad, in that I feel it set me back a couple of weeks and brought on my pain in the left side again, the second fall was not so bad because I was able to put my hands out to save myself. There now, you have the full grotty details. Sometimes wonder who I am talking to but at the same time its OK as I am quite comfortable in talking to myself.
Still got the lower back pain but the nerve going up the full length of the left leg seems to be taking a back seat for the time being, thank gawd!! touch wood ( I am afraid I actually have to, admit that I do that when stuff really matters to me!!)

I got the images off to Printmaking online OK, as usual, it took far longer than I imagined and of course I had to do it mega perfectly. Would you believe it though they managed despite my meticulously organized information, to get the details wrong on one of my images. So thats another thing that I need to do.

I can't remember where or how I came across this printmaker artists work but I liked its anatomically grotesque edge which at the same time is extremely beautiful.

Amber Dye (her real name) hails from Seattle, WA, by way of Philadelphia and South
Florida)

She makes her etchings at the
printmaking studio in the Sevshoon arts centre.

Amber completed her BFA in printmaking and drawing from the University of Central Florida in 1996.
The print featured here is from a series of prints that are inspired by medical and anatomical illustrations, several books on medical oddities, and the idea of constructing body parts/objects that are physically impossible. To see more of her extraordinary work go to her album on flickr