When I went to the 2014 Printfest in Ulverston, I mentioned that I had a strange problem with much of the work there - the computer images were so very good that often there was a slight disappointment when I came face to face with the Real Thing. There wasn't enough of an improvement from the copy to the print to draw me in.
With Kevin Holdaway's (mostly) linocut exhibition in Stockport, which I eventually reached this week, days or possibly hours before it closed (of course), things turned out to be reassuringly the other way round. I had been reluctant to go - not my sort of imagery, all looking rather too photographic and very flat - but decided that it was unfair to do the equivalent of judge the book by its cover (um, though I do do that). So I went.
And as I said, the actual prints were a great improvement on the computer images. Still not many of them my sort of thing, still more photograph-y than not, but no longer flat and very much more interesting than I had expected. Holdaway's cutting and registration skills are obviously phenomenal (not so very surprising, he's a member of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers, for which I assume you have to be pretty good) and the amazing intricacy of his work is something I don't associate with linocut. Message to self - don't be so quick to pre-judge in future.
With Kevin Holdaway's (mostly) linocut exhibition in Stockport, which I eventually reached this week, days or possibly hours before it closed (of course), things turned out to be reassuringly the other way round. I had been reluctant to go - not my sort of imagery, all looking rather too photographic and very flat - but decided that it was unfair to do the equivalent of judge the book by its cover (um, though I do do that). So I went.
And as I said, the actual prints were a great improvement on the computer images. Still not many of them my sort of thing, still more photograph-y than not, but no longer flat and very much more interesting than I had expected. Holdaway's cutting and registration skills are obviously phenomenal (not so very surprising, he's a member of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers, for which I assume you have to be pretty good) and the amazing intricacy of his work is something I don't associate with linocut. Message to self - don't be so quick to pre-judge in future.
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