Interview with an artist

As I have been practicing a few printing skills recently (screen printing, letterpress, etching) I decided to start researching artists that use print as their main working technique. And as I have been thinking about different ways to research, not just from books or the internet, I decided interviewing a current artist about their work would be the most informative way to research as I could ask specific questions and find out what I wanted to know without wading through irrelevant text.

I spoke to artist Peter Driver who I met at Winchester School of Art a few years ago. As soon as I thought of printing, he came straight to mind as I have a couple of his prints at home. I love his work and am hoping to make some of my own prints in a similar style. Here is the interview:

Could you tell me about your background, where you're from, education, what got you interested in art?

I grew up on a large rural Council estate in the cultural desert that is The Fens.  We were very poor. My dad was a carpenter working in factory jobs and my mum was a school dinner lady but it was a stable family environment. I went to the worst secondary school in Cambridgeshire and did not thrive academically, failing almost all my ‘O’ Levels, including Art.  

I’ve been a birdwatcher since the moment I saw a Lapwing in a Fenland field from my bus window when I was 8 years old.  My first artistic efforts as a child were paintings of birds – lots of them.  I tried to copy the illustrations from my bird books in watercolour and cut them out and had them stuck all over my bedroom wall.

After failing O Level Art I went to the local sixth form centre, got good O and A levels in Art and went to Cambridge School of Art to do the Foundation Course (1981-82). I studied graphics, painting and sculpture on the Foundation Course.  I think I didn’t have the maturity to make the most of those opportunities and I was frightened by the freedom and challenge to my conservative thinking that an art education would have entailed. I took a long break (28 years!) but maintained an active interest in art, visiting galleries and exhibitions during my long public sector career.  Only after my dad died in 2008 did I start making art again.  It was one of those moments in life where you take stock of what you want to do with what’s left of your time. I decided I wanted to make art!

I had ended up as a company secretary for a Government affordable housing agency but in 2011 I took voluntary redundancy (I couldn’t stomach working for the new Tory government anyway).  Redundancy gave me the opportunity to return to Art School and get my Fine Art degree.  I was 48 when I started the BA course and I loved absolutely every minute of it, squeezing the most out of every opportunity.  At the end I decided to stay on and study for an MA in Fine Art – basically, I didn’t want to leave and felt I had a lot more learning to do.  I think I’ll keep learning until I die.  Every time I make a new piece I learn something new.

What themes have your art been about in the past and what you're focusing on now?
What inspires you and why?

I became a keen evangelical Christian in my later teenage years. Although I no longer fit that description, many of those foundational myths are still part of my makeup and inform my philosophy and practice as an artist. A lot of my artwork has been politically motivated, in the sense that it is about society, human responses to difference, migration, generosity, optimism, etc. Because of my past life as a narrow-minded religious fundamentalist I now enjoy exploring the complexity and ambiguity of language. To the extent that I use words and language in my work, one of the main reasons is to expose the way texts can have multiple interpretations and that meanings are not fixed but derive from a participatory process involving the author and the reader.

I also incorporate my experience of landscape into my work. This can involve durational walks (the longest so far was a thirteen-day walk from Winchester to Canterbury) or simply using the memory of walking journeys and memories of place. Because I am a birder, my experience of landscape is often in wild and overlooked corners of the countryside. I’m a country boy – not streetwise or urban in any sense – but my political and social concerns bring me into urban settings too.

My recent work has addressed a specific area of public policy – primary education policy. I am concerned that the school curriculum is being skewed towards what is measurable, rather than what has educational value.  Rather than encouraging creativity, originality and imagination, the curriculum focusses on the rules of grammatical construction, phonics and uniformity. I have made work in response to this situation.

Peter Driver Every one is Important II woodcut print edition of 5.

What do you want viewers to get from your work?

I always make work with an audience in mind. I aim to be inclusive and to avoid the elitism that seems to permeate the art world.  That’s why I have enjoyed taking my work into the streets on my public performative actions or in accessible and non-exclusive spaces like K6 Gallery in Southampton.

I want viewers to have an experience that makes them consider their own position, their own attitudes or experiences.  For example, I have a series of woodcut prints – an ‘infinite’ edition – that simply carries the words ‘I’m glad you’re alive!’.  I have been making and giving these away to people, often complete strangers in the street, for over three years now and have so far given away 2,753 of them.  I want people to be confronted with the statement and to consider what it could mean.  What does it mean to be glad that a complete stranger is alive?  What could it mean to be glad that everyone is alive?  Is there anyone we would exclude from that generous position – and why? Those are the kinds of internal dialogues I am hoping to trigger with that work.  I know it triggers one within me.

Peter Driver I'm glad you're alive infinite edition woodcut print. 

What materials do you use and what type of work do you like to produce? Why?

I use woodcut printmaking, drawing, photography, video, sound, banner-making and performative action. My work is about the ideas rather than perfecting any particular technique. I try to stay open to using a wide variety of media. The works of the last three years have included organising public placard-making workshops; organising public parades; live-drawing; drawing from memory with my eyes closed, woodcut printmaking; durational walks with sets of rules e.g. making a drawing every mile for three days; durational projects such as listing every bird species seen or heard in the order they occur for a fixed period of 94 days - and using the data-set to generate woodcut prints, drawings and further work.

The motivation is usually to communicate something about being human. Sharing experiences of landscape or ideas about optimism or openness. Presenting ambiguously optimistic statements to unsettle the viewer. I think all art work is political in that it either perpetuates and accepts the status quo or it agitates for something better. Whether it's about environmental or social concerns, I hope to express something through my work that makes people question where they stand in relation to my statements.

What exhibitions have you participated in?

I was recently invited to create a solo show for K6 Gallery, Southampton. The show runs until 1 December and is entitled 'Imagined Futures'. It comprises four site-specific banners and six large woodcuts all made to fit within the two phone boxes. The show presents a focussed set of statements addressing primary education policy - albeit in a fairly oblique way.

I had a solo show at OpenHand OpenSpace, Reading in October, called 'For Such a Time as this'. It included two main bodies of work made in 2017: a set of prints on found/recycled materials; and work generated from the 94 day bird recording project.

In the last couple of years I had a solo show at the Jam Factory, Oxford and have participated in a number of group exhibitions, in Winchester, Reading and London, including collaborative work with my colleagues from Chapel Arts Studios, Andover and OpenHand OpenSpace, Reading.

I was selected to show in the 10 Days biennial, Winchester - my submission was a three-day walk from the highest point in Hampshire (Pilot Hill) down to the chalk streams of the Dever, and Itchen, ending at the Winchester Gallery, where I showed the drawings I had made every mile of the journey and did a live chalk-drawing at the opening onto a 8x4 foot blackboard.

I have plans for several projects, which will come to fruition over the next year or so and I am always interested in collaboration with other artists. I love working with other people and learning from those experiences.

Peter Driver Play woodcut print edition of 7.

http://www.peterdriver.info  

Please visit his website for more work!

I think interviews are a very successful way to research as you get a better feel for someones work when they express their own thoughts behind it. There is more emotion and from that I feel more inspired to carry on creating prints. Peter also made a point that backs up my research through practice method, he stated "I think I’ll keep learning until I die.  Every time I make a new piece I learn something new." This shows you can still gain technical and theoretical knowledge through making work. Reflecting on this process is something I strongly believe in. 

Wood block letterpress

Following on from my metal type letterpress workshop, I then decided to carry on with the more creative wood block as well, seeing as I knew all the basics. I liked the technique a lot more as you could be more spontaneous and less precise when setting up the type. This worked better for the phrase I wanted to print. 

I wanted to experiment with the phrase 'perfectly normal'. I have always thought this phrase was odd - having someone be perfectly normal sounds very boring. The unique subtleties of people are what make them interesting. In my eyes everyone with their own quirks are classed as perfect so I wanted to make a print expressing this idea. People have become so obsessed with becoming perfect that psychologists have diagnosed Perfectionism as a disorder, stating “Perfection, of course, is an abstraction, an impossibility in reality” https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/perfectionism

This concept is something I am currently researching into for my project. Using the mermaid as a visual metaphor for perfection. Even though there is a contradiction in the way they are meant to be beautiful and flawless in a lot of stories, luring men to them - as seen in the mermaid of Zennor folklore I mentioned in a previous post, but they are not what our society accepts as perfect because they are different from the majority. 

I designed the composition with the idea in mind that you don't have to be exactly in line with what everyone else is doing to be seen as perfect. I wanted all the letters to be different, placed outside standard lining and spacing, using different inking techniques on all of them so they don't co-ordinate, to show this idea. 

I used blue and green colours again, like in my etchings, to tie in with my theme of mermaids. Ocean colours seem to work well with the mermaid imagery, I think it helps the audience associate with the subject matter more. I tried several prints with just blue, experimenting with the amount of ink and composition. I then added some green on my final print to tie it all together. 

I used several techniques to ink the blocks up such as the standard roller, but then working into that inked surface with white spirit to distort the smoothness. I also used a paint brush to make brush marks in the ink and to also flick ink/white spirit onto the blocks. I wanted the variety of techniques to convey the variety of perfection we can have in society. 

This also gave me the opportunity to learn new techniques and a new skill that has benefited my work. By continuing this type of practice based research, I am gaining new knowledge every time I make a new piece. I recently interviewed the artist Peter Driver who uses a lot of text in his woodcut prints. He agreed with me, stating "I think I’ll keep learning until I die.  Every time I make a new piece I learn something new."

Every skill I pick up seems to spark new ideas for my project, seeing how I could potentially use it to benefit my practice. This type of research works well for me. I have come to realise forcing myself to try and read a lot of academic papers and theory books just does'nt work as well for me. 

Overall I am happy with the outcome of these prints even though the were just experiments. I prefer the prints where I used more ink as they are bolder and portray my message clearer to the audience. I could perhaps use the faded ones as a background. I think the brush mark letters work very well as they create a distressed/distorted look which helps towards my idea of not having to look in line to be normal. 

Life Drawing with Wolves!

When I decided I was going to focus my MA on mythical creatures, I was unsure as to what creatures I would be looking at and thought werwolves may have been a possibility. So I booked myself a place at the CASS Sculpture Foundation Halloween Life drawing special! 
The twist was you were drawing wolves instead of people! (they were actually Lupine dogs)

I have always been an animal lover, dogs and wolves especially so this was going to be a no brainer for me even if it doesn't quite fit into my project now, as I'm focusing on mermaids. 
But even though my subject matter has changed, I still saw this as a way of researching. In one of my question of research lectures, we discussed in groups the different ways we research. One of the main points we focused on was going out into different environments, events, museums, galleries etc. and just experiencing the world, taking in information that way - this is my preferred method. There are many more ways to gather information than just reading. 

As I was drawing live animals, you couldn't ask them to pose so it was a great way to practice my quick, responsive sketching skills. This is a key skill that can be transferred to anyones practice, especially if drawing outdoors, trying to capture the moving environment. I want to attempt to paint some seascapes from life in Portsmouth for my project so this class was a great way for me to research these methods first. 

And I also got to explore the grounds, looking at some of the great sculptures too.
Thanks to @cass_sculpture and wildlifedrawing.co.uk for putting on a fun session!

Letterpress - Metal type

Today I learnt the basics of letterpress printing, which is a form of relief printmaking. We started with metal type as this has all the essentials for spacing etc. and will move onto the more creative woodblock at a later stage.
I was surprised at how complicated the process was and how much effort goes into preparing the text before printing. 

I found it interesting to see how the printing of text originated and how much spacing and correcting mistakes we take for granted when working on computers that are programmed to do it all for us.
https://thebeautyofletterpress.com/letterpress/ 

You have to work right to left, the opposite of how we read, which I found slightly difficult when setting the type. The individual letters are very small which made it hard to distinguish similar ones, such as p and q, the phrase 'mind your p's and q's' derives from the letterpress as they are easily mixed up. Also the phrase 'I'm all out of sorts' comes from printers running out of certain characters to print with. With all this in mind I did a proof (test run). 

I then corrected my mistake, using tweezers as fingers are too big to remove one letter without ruining the whole line. After that print was successful I decided to add some embellishment as well. I wanted to do this as it reminds me of old books that often have the first letter looking fancy. As my project seems to be heading that way I thought it would be a good addition to the text, giving it an older feeling without having to drastically change the text.

I liked seeing the analogue version of our modern day printing. If I use any text within my work I feel this would be a good way of going about it as it would be authentic, fitting into the past time period my narrative would be set in. 
I also enjoyed seeing how two different types of technology, printing press and computer, can achieve the same results. Both help to develop my creativity and practice.

Printing Experiments

Today was a very productive day spent in the print room, having indications for both etching and screen printing. 
I like both these techniques as they're very organic and tactile. I think they would work well for my illustrations because of this. If my illustrations were to be set hundreds of years ago then a more traditional form of creating work would be suitable. 

I experimented with different line pressures and mark making in these designs. I also experimented with using different coloured inks (blues and greens to relate to the ocean).

I used 2 or 3 layers of ink in these screen prints. I think they came out well, I like the colours I have used, the blue for the ocean and then browny oranges to complement this. I may use my screen printing in my question of research module - where traditional and technology meet with the use of the light exposure machine to create the design on your screen. This is an example of how technology has helped develop creativity and my practice by efficiency. 

Artist Books

The further I get into researching for my proposal and major project, the more I am leaning towards making an artist's book.

I have never made one before, so doing something new appeals to me. As my research is quite historical I thought it may be a good outcome that could be part of Portsmouth library/museums/galleries to reach an audience. 

The artist book collection at the University of Portsmouth was quite inspirational, I got a few ideas from it. 

This book particularly caught my attention as it is quite nautical and has illustrations of what appears to be mermaids/men or mythical figures which links to my project nicely. The traditional style of the art work is also something that appeals to me, with an older, historic feel that is seen commonly on in older books. As I'd like my story and illustrations to be set in an older time period, this could be a style/technique to consider using. 
I want to understand the text alongside the imagery but it's in french. I will try and translate parts of it to gauge the story.

This was another book that caught my eye. The scroll design and paper colouring could be effective in own project to give an aged feel and help give atmosphere and an instant historic feel to the audience. This may make the illustrations and story appear more believable or engaging. If myths and legends have a chance of being real, I think this captures the audiences imagination so they are more likely to be intrigued.

other links to books I have looked at for inspiration:
http://theministryofbooks.blogspot.co.uk
http://dampflat.blogspot.co.uk/p/artists-books.html
http://www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/newsletters/
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/a/books-artists/
http://www.tate.org.uk/research/library/artists-books
https://blog.library.si.edu/2012/06/what-is-an-artists-book/#.WetSqDPMzVo