It's been a while since my last post, but i'm always thinking and making prints.
I undertook a residency at Leicester Print Workshop working with the archive of Suzanne Balkanyi’s etching plates. It resonated strongly with the work I was developing in response to loss and memorialisation. Balkanyi’s work is highly illustrative, the selection of plates were sophisticated portraits of animals and representational landscapes.
I became intrigued by the possibility of collaborating with these physical remnants of an artist’s practice, aiming to create contemporary prints that honoured both her work and mine. I saw this as an opportunity to add new layers of meaning to the existing plates. Etching plates, in many ways, hold printmaking secrets that are seldom visible. Through this collaboration, I produced over a hundred unique prints, each one offering a new narrative and distinct abstract imagery, all derived from Balkanyi’s original plates without causing any damage to the etching plates themselves.
I stopped looking at the pictures on the plates but looked at the lines. Printmakers are obsessed with lines, for etchers many of our plates are made from so many lines. We ask technical questions of our lines; will they hold ink well? Are they deep enough? I selected lines, a lot of them. I thought about the lines a lot. What if I added to Suzanne’s lines, what if I disrupted her lines?
Our lines were made in different countries, different times and we have different lineage. In today’s ever unstable world my approach was to respect and tread lightly not to run roughshod over Suzanne’s lines but realign and recalibrate.
These prints are unique, not part of an edition, and are printed on Fabriano Rosaspina paper, measuring 50x70 cm. Each print is available for purchase at £350, unframed.
https://www.keeganarts.co.uk/blank
https://www.leicesterprintworkshop.com/exhibitions/you-will-never-know-how-happy-i-am
