New Silk screens analysis of work so far and moving forward.

As discussed in a previous post I have experimented with different ways of portraying the landscape, within my practice by using the circular tondo format, using bright colouration as well as abstracting it to a point so that it has moved to a state whereby it appears to be very far removed from any particular reference to the landscape instead having the appearance of something else that may not have its origins within a particular place. 

Coastal Landscape Study, 2015, Oil on MDF, 70 x 70cm

Figment of the Imagination, 2015, Silkscreen and Acrylic on Paper, 20 x 35cm

Although this has been valid and necessary experimentation, I feel that the work that is most effective with regards to my original research statement in which I set out to explore the crossover between between place and memory has been that that explicitly references the places I have been using as subject matter. The end results of this experimentation have contained a direct reference to the places I have been exploring which would be obvious to the viewer.

Similarly as mentioned within my previous blog, the issue of colour has continued to be an overriding concern within this project. My natural inclination being to amplify and exagerrate it's use within my practice. One aspect that I feel has been particulary effective has been the fashion in which I have been able to introduce a sense of distortion via the scanning process. In analysing this I think that it has had the effect of creating a sense of dislocation which has been more effective than the use of bright non-naturalistic colour characteristic of much of my experimentation during this unit, which has had more of a hallucinatory quality to it. 

Another aspect of the work that I feel has been partially effective, but hoped to expand upon was the crossover and juxtaposition between the spontaneous use of paint alongside the more graphic silkscreen printed imagery, which has helped to create a greater sense of tension and drama within the work. 

Drift I, 2015, Silkscreen and Gloss on MDF, 29 x 40cm

Irregular Fluctuation I, Silkscreen and Gloss on MDF, 25 x 36cm

With all of these aspects in mind I set about creating a set of four new silk screens, in which I referenced the landscape of the walk I had undertaken close to my parents house, a walk I had undertaken many times as a child and throughout my adult life. With my intention being of silkscreening on top of a painted surface I mixed a series of colours which corresponded to the original photographs that I was using as my subject matter.

I experimented with a number of different images which I scanned and subjected to the distortion process that I had been utilising within much of my earlier studies, before arriving at four pieces that I felt were the most effective.

The four final images that I chose were composed of a mixture of vertical and horizontal distortion. I was particular pleased with the fact that these images more than my previous experimentation explicitly referenced and could be traced back to the landscape from where the imagery had been derived. The distortion helped to create a strong visual language that this was a landscape that was fragmenting, disintegrating as well as creating a visual sense of displacement and disconnection. I felt the most effective areas were those in which the distortion began to change and adjust familiar elements such as the telegraph poles, trees and vegetation so that they started to have the appearance of something less grounded within the real world, whilst simultaneously recongnisable as something with an origin in the landscape.

Now is Past (after John Clare) study, 2015, Silkscreen and Acrylic on Paper, 40 x 70cm

Landscape (a lost object), 2015, Silkscreen and Acrylic on Paper, 40 x 70cm

Disconnect, Study, 2015, Silkscreen and Acrylic on Paper, 40 x 70cm

Undulation study, 2015, Silkscreen and Acrylic on Paper, 40 x 70cm

Initially I experimented by using the paints that I had mixed from the original photographs taken from my walk. I silkscreened the four images on top of these painted surfaces, a selection of which I have shown above. 

In analysing the results of this experimentation, I was pleased with the juxtaposition of the printed and painted surfaces, which I felt genenerated an interesting contrast. Alongside this I felt that the used of naturalistic colours was also effective as it referenced the places from which I had derived the imagery. Similarly the distortion that had been created within the original scans transferred across well onto the printed surfaces changing the nature of the places that I was depicting and adding another interesting dynamic to the work. I was pleased with the areas of the composition in which the paint appeared to be bleeding and smudging outside of the picture plane.

However I felt that there were a number of ways in which these images were not effective. The painted areas were quite crude and whilst effective I felt that the brush marks needed to be refined in order to be less apparent. Similarly although my use of colour was more effective in terms of depicting the landscape that I was referencing I still felt that the colours were too heavy, whilst the use of black ink for the silkscreened areas represented too great a contrast alongside the painterly areas. It felt although the printed areas sat on top of the painted areas without there being enough interchange between the two different states.

Landscape, colour and dislocation

'I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me.' (Strayed, 2013)

The idea of walking as a cathartic, healing, redemptive process is the storyline of the film wild, 2014. The film is based on the 2012 memoirs by the same name of Cheryl Strayed and is an account of an epic hike she undertook along a 1,100 mile section of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) in 1995. Strayed describes the three month trip as a spiritual journey, a way of finding her way back to the person that she used to be. Following the death of her mother from cancer aged 45, combined with an abusive father during her childhood Strayed's life had slipped into a freefall of heroin abuse and a series of destructive affairs.

Although ill equipped and with very little experience of hiking on such an epic walk Strayed undertook the jouney as a way of helping her to come to terms with losing her mother. Strayed realised that surviving the adversity and setbacks along the way way was due to the difficult childhood that she had once blamed for her troubles. The film captures perfectly the experience of the cyclical repetitive nature of enduring an experience as well as the redemptive and spiritually uplifting nature of successfully completing an arduous journey and coming to terms with a troubled past.
 

As my Master's Project has progressed I realise that this project has operated on quite a personal level. The places that I have chosen in order to inform my work have been taken from the landscape in and around the area in which I have grown up. A once familiar landscape that I have returned to after a ten year exodus having moved away to university before moving to London. Having recently been forced to return to this landscape due to illness, I have experienced a sense of dislocation and separation from it. By immersing myself in it once again I feel that I have come face to face with the memories of a former self embedded within this landscape. 

Expanding Landscape, 2015, Oil on Paper, 40 x 60cm

Slippage I, 2015, Silkscreen and Gloss on MDF, 26 x 40cm

Is it possible that my use of strong non-naturalistic colour as well as experimentation with distortion has been some attempt at manifesting this sense of dislocation? It seems that my default setting is to use bright colours, regardless of the colours inherent within the places depicted. Within my Master's Project I have oscillated between using strong colours and abandoning it completely in favour of using just black ink and paint, as depicted in the pieces above and those shown below. Place has been a consistent and ongoing concern within my work however it is the colour that has been a changeable element.

Irregular Fluctuation, 2015, Silkscreen on MDF, 25 x 36cm

Simulcrum, 2015, Pen and Ink on Paper, 70 x 100cm

In going forward I think it would be beneficial for me to attempt to re-introduce colour back into the work but to moderate its use so that it relates back to the places that are being depicted as well as toning it down so as not to be overly non-naturalistic or bright. Not only do I feel that this would be beneficial in terms of the work being produced but also as a way forcing myself to curb my natural instincts with regard to my use of colour.

Framing:

As part of the Bishop's Art Prize 'Streams of Living Water,' I had one of my silkscreens, slippage chosen to be exhibited as part of the competition. 

Richard Wade, 2015, Slippage I, Silkscreen and Gloss on MDF.

I contemplated several ways in which I was going to display this piece and decided in the end that it would be most effective to have it float mounted and framed within a box frame.

Richard Wade, 2015, Slippage I with box frame, 39 x 48.5cm.

 In choosing to frame my work using a float mount and box frame, I felt that this was in keeping with my research and related to the idea of a blending and blurring between the past and the present.  

Suspending the work within the window I felt helped to create the appearance that the work was hovering or floating above the rear backing board, which I felt gave it an added sense of ambiguity as well as adding to the sense that it was unanchored within the physical world of place and the landscape. 

Using this method of framing enabled the edges of the image to be visible within the frame allowing a shadow to be cast onto the background. I felt that this helped to create the impression that this was an object or a fragment that belonged as a part of something 
else.


Strayed, Cheryl, (2013) 'Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found.' London: Atlantic Books.

New Paintings

'The Simulacrum is never what hides the truth- it is the truth that hides the fact that there is none. The simulacrum is true.'  (Baudrillard, 1994; 1)

Hyperreality is a term used in semiotics, consisting of the inability to distinguish reality from simulation. Reality and fiction are blended together so there is no clear distinction between them.

The interface between the scanner and the printed photograph manifested within my ink drawings represents a blending and fusion between reality, representation and technology. The end result becomes a hybrid of both with gliches from the scanning process combining with recognizable areas from the landscape. 

Dan Hays, The Clearing, 1999, Oil on Canvas

Dan Hays' anti-romantic paintings make use of nature as his subject matter but the method is derived from imitation and technology.
Looking at a Hays' painting is not to experience a communion with nature but instead a sense of separation. The work is not really about the landscape, but seems to be more concerned with 'second nature' or the overlay human beings have imposed on nature via their technologies.

'The project is collectively titled Colorado Impressions, as digital image compression has striking formal associations with the Impressionist imperative to capture the essence of a scene as quickly as possible with a restricted palette of colours... this is a special relationship, where we can see digital photographs as proto-paintings, abstracting visual information, creating painterly effects several removes from the world.' (danhays, 2015)

Dan Hays, Colorado Impression 9c, 2002, Oil on Canvas

My recent paintings carry a strong influence to Hays' work via the process of simplification and the reduction of the composition as well as the influence of technology via the process of scanning and the subsequent interference and conflict with the picture plane.

In creating these paintings I chose to move away from the places that I had used in order to inform previous work: Mousehold Heath and the North Norfolk Coast. As a reference for these paintings I used a walk that I have regularly undertaken close to my parents house which takes the walker alongside the banks of the river Wensum for a stretch of around five miles. As with the previous two locations that I used to reference my work this is a space that I have regularly visited as a child and a young adult and therefore my intention was that it contained within it memories and associations from my past.

Photographic panoramas taken during my walk along the river.

River Walk, 2015, Oil on Canvas, 35 x 60cm

River Walk I, 2015, Oil on Canvas, 50 x 75cm

In creating this recent series of works I chose to experiment once more with the medium of paint in order to move away from the work that I had previously created using drawing and silk screen. I attempted to utilise the distortion via the process of scanning that I felt had been very effective within previous experimentation. 

In analysing my intention for the work and the outcome I would come to the conclusion that although effective in part, overall I would say that the results achieved via drawing and printing were more effective. Once more within this work as with previous works my overriding propensity to use bright colour has meant that I am no longer referencing the places which I am depicting within the paintings, the bright colours taking precedence over the other aspects of the composition. Similarly the crispness and graphic nature of the drawing and silk screen provided some way of unifying the compositions not present within these pieces. Although I feel that the fashion in which I have handled the paint is partially effective on account of its smudged and blurred nature owing something to chance process, I feel that overall the pieces would benefit by subduing the colours used a well as referencing them back to the original landscapes and places from which the imagery was derived.

'For me there is no difference between a landscape and an abstract painting.. I refuse to limit myself to a single option, to an exterior resemblance, to a unity of style which can't exist. A colour chart differs only externally from a small green landscape. Both reflect the same basic attitude. It is this attitude which is significant.' (Antoine, 2004; 1)

Gerhard Richter, Landscape near Koblenz, 1987, Oil on Canvas

One of the trademark styles of the German painter Gerhard Richter  (1932 - ) is his use of the form of blurring within his work. The blur serves as a perfect general metaphor for memory, its degradation and corrosion that is wrought by time, as well as recalling camera movement and errors of printing. 

'I blur to make everything equal, everything equally important and equally unimportant.' (McCarthy, 2011)

Gerhard Richter, Apple Trees (sketch), 1987, Oil on Canvas.

 

Like many other German artists of his generation, Richter references romanticism within his paintings. However road signs replace church spires within his landscapes, waves and clouds become fragmented, isolated, collaged and inverted. The fascination with the scene he is depicting is retained, but it is a fascination voided of sublimity, wedded instead to repetition and reproduction, an interrogation of the act of looking and the technologies through which this takes place. 

'In principle, the work of art has always been reproducible. Objects made by humans could always be copied by humans. Replicas were made by pupils in practicing for their craft, by masters in disseminating their works, and, finally, by third parties in pursuit of profit. But the technological reproduction of artworks is something new.' (Benjamin, 2008)

In the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, (1936), Walter Benjamin discusses the shift in perception and its affects in the wake of the advent of film and photography. In particular Benjamin discusses how the manner in which we look and see the visual work of art is different now. Benjamin discusses the loss of aura through the act of mechanical reproduction itself. The aura for Benjamin represents the originality and authenticity of a work of art that has not been reproduced. A painting has an aura while a photograph does not; the photograph is an image of an image while the painting remains utterly original.

If in Benjamin's eyes a painting contains within it originality and authenticity whilst a photograph does not then how does this relate to a painting, print or drawing that has been subjected to technology whilst simultaneously referencing photography. My project began as an investigation of memory and the interface between the landscape and the walker passing through. A photograph is regularly used as a way of capturing a moment or a memory in time. A scanner may be used as a way of copying, recording and storing information therefore acting as a vessel in order to transfer and store virtual memories. By creating paintings which have been informed via photographs and scans I am curious to know how this would fit into Benjamin's ideas concerning authenticity. In my mind the process of technology would somehow create a simulated or inauthentic aura when it acts upon a painting. 


Antoine, J.P. (2004) 'Gerhard Richter: Landscapes.' New York: Zwirner & Wirth.

Baudrillard, Jean (1994) 'Simulacrum and Simulation.' translated by Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: Universtiy of Michigan Press.

Benjamin, W. (2008) 'The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.' London: Penguin.

danhays.org (2015) Dan Hays (internet) available at danhays.org/coloradointro.html

McCarthy Tom (2011) 'Blurred Visionary: Gerhard Richter's photo-paintings.' The Guardian 22nd September 2011. 

New silk screen paintings

'When the word 'hallucination' first came into use, in the early 16th Century, it denoted only 'a wandering mind.' It was not until the 1830s that Jean-Etienne Esquisol, a French psychiatrist, gave the term its present meaning- prior to that what we now call hallucinations were referred to simply as 'apparitions.' Precise definitions of the word 'hallucination' still vary considerably, chiefly because it is not always easy to discern where the boundary lies between hallucinations, misperceptions and illusion. But generally hallucinations are defined as percepts, arising in the absence of any external reality- seeing things or hearing things that are not there.'  (Sacks, 2013; 1)

Following on from the pen and ink drawings that I created, I was hoping to create a series or works combining both the linear, graphic and controlled qualites of the drawings by turning them into silk screen prints alongside a much looser and spontaneous aesthetic via the introduction of paint. As well as marrying the printed and painterly surfaces I was also intrigued as to what the introduction of colour would do to the look and the feel of the images. 

I was interested in various accounts of walking that I had been researching which culminated in the walker experiencing hallucinations creating a distorted perception of reality, place and the landscape. The account of John Clare escaping from his incarceration and walking back to his home resulted in him hallucinating due dehydration, exhaustion and a lack of food. In 1991 the artist Hamish Fulton whose work emphasises the action of walking in the landscape walked all 120 miles of the Pilgrim's Way without sleep in midwinter: 'I started to hallucinate,' he says, 'A small blue bag on the path suddenly turned into a turkey.' 

Hamish Fulton, The Pilgrims Way, 1991, Black & White photograph and text. 

In keeping with my research aims concerning memory and the interface between memory submerged within the landscape and those of the walker passing through I felt that it would be appropriate to re-use and utilise the large ink drawings as a way of expanding upon this process. I liked the idea that by subjecting a visual rendering of a landscape to a number of processes both digitial and manual including photography, drawing, scanning and printing, the subject matter changes, becoming dislocated from it's original anchoring within reality instead starting to represent something else more abstract and less defined, this tied into some of the research that I had been undertaking in relation to a hallucination as something arising from the absence of any external reality. Using bright, non naturalistic colours which I mono silk screened onto the paper as a starting point, I repeated the process of moving whilst scanning the pen and ink drawings, which I silk screened on top of the coloured base. 

Transcendental Experience, 2015, Silkscreen and Acrylic on Paper, 20 x 35cm

Untitled, 2015, Silkscreen and Acrylic on Paper, 20 x 35cm

Untitled, 2015, Silkscreen and Acrylic on Paper, 20 x 35cm

Trace and Apparition, 2015, Silkscreen and Acrylic on Paper, 20 x 35cm

Figment of the Imagination, 2015, Silkscreen and Acrylic on Paper, 20 x 35cm

Hallucination, 2015, Silkscreen and Acrylic on Paper, 20 x 35cm

Diffuse, 2015, Silkscreen and Acrylic on Paper, 20 x 35cm

Turbulence, 2015, Silkscreen and Acrylic on Paper, 20 x 35cm

Memory, 2015, Silkscreen and Acrylic on Paper, 20 x 35cm

Fragmentation and Deconstruction, 2015, Silkscreen and Acrylic on Paper, 20 x 35cm

Sub-Conscious Process, 2015, Silkscreen and Acrylic on Paper, 20 x 35cm

Dissolution, 2015, Silkscreen and Acrylic on Paper, 20 x 35cm

Following on from a group critique in which I presented these pieces there were a number of observations that was generated. A number of comments centred on the fact that the prints appeared to resemble a series of sound waves, or seismic waves, defined as waves of energy that travel through the earth's layers, resulting from an earthquake or volcano that gives out low-frequency acoustic energy. 

A seismic wave generated from an erupting volcano.

Comments included the fact that the the colours referenced did not appear to connect to the place from which they were being referenced and that it would be interesting to see what the visual outcome would be if the colours were linked back to Brancaster Staithe in order to see whether this enhanced the sense of that place. The use of non naturalistic colours was noted as creating more of a decorative feel. 

On another level it was also suggested that by using non naturalistic colours alongside the black printed marks it had a repellant and disruptive feel generating the visual effect of a migraine. It was also noted that it would be interesting to see what the effect would be of exhibiting them all together in one seamless line without gaps between them, in order to create a sense of a loop so that they could be interpreted as a continual stream or sequence of information.

Mock up of work displayed as a continual sequence.

Another interesting observation related to the fashion in which the spaces within the compositions were being utilised as a way of representing either the land or the sky, and the fact that it would be useful to attempt to manipulate this space in order to see how the pieces might look if either of these were removed or their proportions were adjusted. 

One of the final points that was noted in relation to my work was about the particular space of Burnham Overy Staithe and the idea of attempting to go back in time or revisit a place containing memories from the past. It was suggested that via the process of revisiting and reconnecting with a particular place and the memories stored there attempting to physically depict this would be more effective if it was done in an abstract, hypothetical fashion, rather than in a figurative and representational manner.

'With the painting the inspiration comes from the process of the work itself... like music (making the work) is an emotional experience. It's a visual language and it's almost impossible to put words to it.' (huckmagazine, 2015)

An artist, whose works deals with ideas around dislocation and alienation who subjects his imagery to number of different processes as well as working across a variety of mediums is the artist Christopher Wool. Christopher Wool's recent paintings address the experience of bringing us closer to an understanding of the creative dislocation we share with a metropolis we know we can neither inhabit or escape. A sprayed line of enamel covers a canvas, while on another canvas the same looping line recurs as a screen print. The painting is always relocated or dislocated and systematically amputated from the moment and the place of work. Wool photographs a line in order to create a silkscreen that repeats it however many times, the colours in higher and lower resolution, introducting an additional level of disorientation. 

Christopher Wool, Untitled, 2009, Enamel, Silkscreen, Spray Paint on Paper

 This systematic repetition across mediums creates the effect of dislocation and alienation, allowing for any number of transformative possibilities. Via the use of printing Wool exploits the print's power of repetition meaning that new and different marks and gestures are created from the middle of the work. As the work builds up and accumulates it is simultaneously lost, buried and decomposed. Images of painterly information are cycled through a process causing gestures to drift and return outside of each other, recombining elsewhere with others. 

Christopher Wool, Untitled, 2009, Enamel, Silkscreen, Spray Paint on Paper.

The use of the digital camera in the process affects the sharpness and the grain of the source image as this information is cycled through a process involving a camera, a screen plus other means of mediums the original gesture becomes dislocated and resituated from its origins.

Christopher Wool, 2001, Minor Mishap, Enamel and Silkscreen on Linen

huckmagazine (2015) Christopher Wood (internet) available at www.huckmagazine.com/art-and-culture/art-2/christopher-wool/

Sacks, O (2013) 'Hallucinations.' London: Picador; Main Market Ed. edition.

New pen and ink drawings on paper.

'The past lives on in art and memory, but it is not static: it shifts and changes as the present throws its shadow backwards. The landscape also changes, but far more slowly; it is a living link between what we were and what we have become. This is one of the reasons why we feel such a profound and disproportionate anguish when a loved landscape is altered out of recognition; we lose not only a place, but ourselves a continuity between the shifting phases of our life.'  (Drabble, 2009; 270)

 Having reflected in a previous post on the relative successes of 
the silk screens I produced as a direct response to the changeable and ever shifting landscape of the North Norfolk Coast of Burnham Overy Staithe's sand dunes and salt marshes I was keen to experiment with alternative ways and processes in order to depict the subject matter. I experimented by rendering these images on a much larger scale of 70 x 100cm. I was keen to see how this would compare to the silk screened versions and whether the much more labour intensive, hand crafted versions added anything to the process of experimentation which related back to my original research interests.

Photographs of the coastal landscape after being subjected to distortion via the process of scanning.

In order to inform these images and as subject matter I used the same process of manipulation that I used in order to inform the imagery for my silkscreens, which involved re-scanning print outs of photos taken during a walk at Burnham Overy Staithe which I moved around during the scanning process in order to create a sense of movement and distortion. The three images I have posted directly below are the results of rendering these images using black rotring ink on fabriano paper.

Tracing the Archetypal, Pen and Ink on Paper, 70 x 100cm

Counterfeit Landscape, Pen and Ink on Paper, 70 x 100cm

Simulacrum, Pen and Ink on Paper, 70 x 100cm

Claude Heath (1964 -) questions the relationship between the world of sensation and ourselves within his work. Heath's wall drawings move between being the subject and object of the artists and our imagination. 

Claude Heath, Waterfall 2013, Installation Shot, Wall Drawing.

  

   Claude Heath, Waterfall 2013 (detail)

Claude Heath, Waterfall 2013, end wall.

Heath drawings look like various things - high-density doodles, computer printouts bearing multi-dimensional information. But you don't need to look at them long to see that they are, at least, not free-form abstractions. These intense, hairball tangles of spidery lines, often in several different colours, seem to grope their way towards some kind of legibility or materialisation.

Yet they remain phantoms of the forms that they represent; firstly in the sense that they have a ghostly yet still recognisable relationship with the object they are based on and secondly they are born from an absence (the artist's gaze onto the page which he is drawing). There is as a result, a purposely unresolved and awkward fusion between that which is real and that which is imagined. 

I felt that there were many positive and some negative factors emerging from my recent drawings in relation to my earlier silk screens. Whereas the silk screens were executed on a scale of around 26 x 40cm the pen and ink drawings are operating on a considerably larger scale. When combined with their hand crafted quality alongside the length of time it took to execute them, they felt much more finished and resolved and alot less like experimental pieces. As with Heath's Waterfall wall drawing I am interested in the interplay and exchange between the reality of the scene being depicted alongside the changing and shifting nature of the image as something that has a dreamlike appearance, a few steps removed from reality.

One of the positive qualities with regards to the silk screens was the fact that although executed relatively quickly they created an impression of spontaneity and crudeness which combined effectively with some of the marks and mistakes from the silk screen process as well as the movement and distortion created as a by-product of the scanning process. This contrasted with the graphic imagery created via the use of pen and ink, with the potential for it to be interpreted as more formulaic with less room for spontaneity or errors. However the time taken to produce the drawings, the quality of the mark making and the ambiguity of the subject matter meant that they possessed a much more finished and satisfying quality in relation to the more sketchy nature of the silk screened images.


I took the opportunity to visit the Sigmar Polke exhibition: Alibis, 1963-2010 at the Tate Modern. I was particularly interested in the fashion with which Polke utilised technology within his work as a way of creating distortion within the imagery as well as the fashion with which he juxtaposes both painterly and printed marks.

Sigmar Polke, Untitled (Triptych) 2002, polyester resin and acrylic paint on fabric

From his earliest practice Sigmar Polke emphasised a dynamic tension between expression, gesture and mechanical reproduction. His paintings combined found printed images with more organically made painterly marks. Making use of half-tone photography from newspapers and magazines Polke enlarged and reproduced the imagery often corrupting the original beyond recognition. 

Sigmar Polke, Fear (Black Man) 1997, Synthetic resin and lacquer on polyester fabric

'Printing Errors,' were a large group of paintings Polke created between 1996-98 in which he examined, much enlarged, minute ink slippages and spillages that read as errors on the printed page. Polke made others by manipulating photocopies during the copying process to create distortions of the imagery he was copying such as the image above, Fear (Black Man). Some errors bore close resemblances to details in the images in which they occured. By making use of a half-tone printing technique he helped to convert the visual image into a pattern of even-sized units consisting of a dotted diamond pattern.

Perhaps most intriguing for me is the fashion with which Polke has created a sense of tension within his work by combining a number of opposing elements including the mechanical nature of the printed imagery alongside the more organic painterly marks. In moving forward I am interested to see what would happen within my own work by combining gestural painterly marks alongside the more structured, precise marks created via the process of silk screen printing. Similarly I am also interested in experimenting by re-introducing areas of colour into my compositions which would be interesting to juxtapose alongside the monotone areas with the aim of creating an underlying tension, dynamic and interplay between a variety of opposing elements. 

Drabble, M (2009) 'A Writer's Britain.' London: Thames & Hudson.