This is one of my recent 4 x 4" acrylic monotypes on paper. After putting them away in a portfolio and now looking at them again, I sometimes get the urge to interpret some of them on large canvases. This is one of those that would possibly fit into that category. Or maybe they wouldn't.

I don't think small format always translates well into large format. Currently I love working small, and it has nothing to do with physical inclinations. I can work just as happily on a huge canvas. It's just a matter of the current mood I'm in. In fact, I'm thinking of going even smaller.

Small artworks are intimate. They draw the viewer in for a closer, longer look. There's always room -- and perhaps a hiding place in the budget -- for a small artwork, even if you have a big art collection. But even a small piece can have great presence with an oversized border or mat.

"Reclamation" - Acrylic Monotype on Paper
Image size 4 x 4", paper size 11 x 11"
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Some Abstract Artists who Create Small Works

Jay Kelly

Josette Urso

Ilene Sunshine

Lisa Sparling

Marek Petryk

Amy Murchison Schlenker

Marie Louise Eriksen

The art world is abuzz about small works. Some links to interesting recent articles on the subject of small works include:

Painting at About.com - Selling Paintings: Do Large or Small Paintings Sell More?

Art Business News - Small Art's Giant Appeal, April 2008

New York Times - Is Painting Small the Next Big Thing? - April 19, 2008

I'm inspired. I hope you are too.

On April 17, 2008, the East Bay Artists Guild held a membership meeting where member artists were encouraged to bring in their most controversial artwork for display and discussion. Chipotle Restaurant provided burritos and chips for everyone as part of their community outreach. The hot salsa was the perfect complement to the hot topic. Artwork ranged from sensitive anti-war pieces to equally sensitive nude studies.

Thank you Chipotle Restaurant for sharing your awesome food!!

East Bay Artists Guild is a local non-profit art group that shows member art at two locations on Crescent Drive in Pleasant Hill and currently has an art show in the Diablo Valley College Library, Pleasant Hill Campus, until May 10. Find out more about EBAG on the web at ebag.wordpress.com.

I went back to thinking about a Chinese calligraphy exhibition I saw at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston last spring. At the exhibition, they had a wide variety of different kinds of scrolls. There were many of the typical scrolls that you expect to see: tall and vertical, and hanging on the wall. The scrolls that really got me going were two scrolls in the back of the exhibition. They were horizontal scrolls that were insanely long; each scroll showed at least 20 feet or so, and there had to be many more feet of image because only a portion was being displayed. Today, thinking about those scrolls got me wondering how I could translate the extreme horizontal format for some ink drawings.

I started considering extremely long, horizontal ink drawings that would dominate and cut across a gallery space with their length. The scrolls at the MFA exhibition were on flat tables, approximately waist high, encased in glass for protection. In the end, I saw that there were essentially three different formats, and of course variations on each of those formats: 1) having the drawings lie flat on long tables like the MFA exhibition, 2) hang the drawings with invisible wiring from the ceiling, which would make them behave more like three-dimensional objects, and 3) hang the drawings on the wall, at eye level in a continual line across all of the walls to create a drawing that never ends. Of these three options, I got really excited about the third option, and did a very quick sketch of how it might look. It might still be a while before I get around to actually executing the idea, but I find that the longer I have to ponder and simmer on a thought while I'm working on other parts of the project, the stronger the idea will be when the time comes.

For this last monotype, I went back to a single figure format. I made a concerted effort to work more intensively with the very thin brush strokes towards the end of the process. A few months back, I had tried the opposite approach, attempting to make the compositions as sparse as possible with just a few large brush strokes. I think the results are a little fuller and there's a greater range of variety in the different brush strokes.

Submerge XX

This got me thinking whether I should be trying to create a stronger connection between the individual prints in this way. In the other prints it’s abundantly clear that each is of the same image, just articulated differently.

Speaking of the shift to the horizontal format, I’m curious to see whether I keep with the sequence of ghost prints. It’s quite possible that the ghost prints may not work in this new format, and I’ll simply go with one print instead. I think the best way to do it is for me to print the full sequence of ghost prints on the first print and then play around with different options. Any time I switch gears, I think it’s important to set aside any expectations and let the work dictate what needs to happen.

This image was pretty tough to tackle because the four figures crowded the composition, and because I had to find a way for their reflections in the water to interact while still staying distinctly independent from the others. It may warrant further experiments to see how to strike the right balance in such a full composition. This monotype was #17, so I've got three more to go before I reach twenty prints total.

Energized by the printing from last night, I painted another plate today, and will opt to do three more to bring me to a total of twenty prints for this series.

One of the more interesting ghost prints from yesterday night.

I guess the reason painting is on my mind is because it’s another way to create layers, a prominent idea in this current project, both conceptually and visually. I’ve always seen water as having infinite layers, which is what makes it so rich in terms of its visual potential. If I do end up doing paintings, it’s still a very long way off, as I think I have quite a bit more work to do in printmaking before I get there.

I printed this last plate the other night, and it’s become pretty clear that I’m not quite ready to consider this group of vertical monotypes as complete. So frequently, I tend to do my best work towards the end of a body of work, when I’ve had time for my approach and ideas to come to full fruition. The decision to stop a body of work is never simple, and I always end up asking myself whether I could have done more. For me, one of three things has to occur: 1) I lose interest in the work, 2 )The work becomes repetitive, or 3) I’ve produced such a large quantity of work that I think I’ve fulfilled all of the potential possibilities. I would hope that the third is the option is the one which happens first, although I will admit that it is not always the case. I suppose there’s always the option to return to the work if I really needed to, but that would be a rarity.

I was anxious to move on to horizontal compositions, but instead I elected to paint one more vertical plate yesterday, which will bring me to fourteen monotypes total.

Multiple figures is exciting because of the potential to significantly expand the sense of space in the composition, yet at the same time it presents its own set of problems. Currently, the one that I'm most aware of is how to establish a visual relationship between the figures so that they do not fragment within the composition. In today's plates, I used a very thin watercolor brush to create extremely light and fine lines to connect all of the figures. It seems like in the horizontal compositions those lines will start to play a more significant role.

Unprinted plates.

I definitely wanted to set specific numbers for the format to provide cohesion for the prints when they're shown together. I like the idea of triptychs because it's half of six, and also because it creates a beginning, middle, and an end. Since the prints are very much about a progression, it made sense to me that this was necessary. I had a few prints with which I experimented with having four prints in a row, and it just looked too even; it was too easy for your eye to simply split them down the middle and see two on each side.

That's exactly where I am right now: last night as I was printing, I started wondering whether these images would be more effective as ink drawings. I'm trying to ignore this thought so I can push forward and finish these monotypes. I remind myself that the transformation and processing of the image is one aspect of printmaking that is important.

I'm a firm believer that this questioning process is essential to developing the work, but there are times when I think this process can be more of a detriment than a benefit. I work hard to keep an awareness of my process, but there are definitely times when that needs to be turned off.

Surfacing 14 30x46 inches
A plate, or more than one plate, can be printed several times on the same paper to produce a triptych (3 panel image) or diptychs ( 2 panels). The resulting image becomes somewhat narrative suggesting a shift in view or a progression of time. Some of these pieces are large for monotypes (though certainly not the largest) ranging from 24x40 inches to 30 x45. Usually I work on a panel a day, keeping the paper damp between printing. The most difficult things are to register (align) the image panels on the paper and to control the very large piece of paper while lining it up.

See the goldfish and koi, large scale page for more images.

I briefly thought about reversing the woodcut process so that I print on black paper using white ink, but I think I've never really been a fan of how white ink looks in printmaking. There's something so much deeper and richer about the impression of black ink that I'm pretty sure I want to retain in the work. However I end up going about it, one thing for sure is that I want to invest a greater effort on changing up the directional movement of my marks in the relief. The woodcuts I completed for the Digging Series largely focused on horizontals, and I'm excited to see what can happen if I completely throw that consistency away.

At the same time, I would really like to get back into doing some large scale monotypes. I know that when I was making the monotypes for the Digging Series that my focus was much more on specifics and details in the figures, and I'm interested to see how my simplified approach to the figure would translate itself in this medium.

"Wandering", a woodcut that inspired the Wading Series

I think I've said this before, but this blog is helping me achieve the continuity in my work that I think I haven't been able to get as readily before. This journal forces me to think about my process and where I am in the work on a daily basis, even if I don't actually do work on the project on a particular day. I feel like I have a much firmer grip on my future goals for the project, and I am finding that I am thinking with much more clarity and purpose in the current work. Forcing myself to verbally write what I am thinking in terms of the project has been much more useful that I could have every predicted. If any thing, it keeps me on track so I don't have to spend the first 30 minutes of the studio trying to remember where to pick up again.

I did several experiments to try and figure out whether these water based monotypes would work. In the end, I realized that a key part of getting control over the pieces was to allow the printing ink to dry 100% on the surface of the plexiglass sheet. This would prevent the ink from squeezing out and printing in areas I didn't want it to. I did several where I didn't wait for the ink to dry fully and the ink ended up spreading everywhere all over the print. I stopped doing them for a while because I became frustrated by how wildly unpredictable the results were; I got 1 print that I thought was pretty interesting, but the rest either suffered from technical problems or really weren't that good. The risk factor in these prints was so high, and I think at the time I wasn't willing to put up with the low productivity level that was a result of this.

I've started thinking recently that perhaps I should revisit these monotypes and see what happens, now that I have a better grip on the technique and process. When I showed some of these prints at a Boston Printmakers meeting a month ago, many people were surprised to find out that they were monontypes and not lithographs. I suppose the textures I was getting looked a lot like tusche. I think if I do revisit them it will be on a smaller scale- these earlier prints were on 22" x 30" paper and I think they were suffering because of this scale.