The journal of the process of making 'Painted Steps'

I saw in Madrid, a most significant object, linking the gold in the churches, the path of the Camino and home: Juan de la Cosa’s mapamundi (map of the world), made in 1500 that includes the earliest surviving European mapping of the Americas.

on parchment  3' x 6' approx.

Having laid the ground (literally the background) of Painted Steps, I’m gathering up images of individual things about the Camino I want to put into the painting, like the little pictures of people, cities, sea monsters and gods, found on maps like this.

I make lists of the birds, plants, animals, structures, dovecotes, peloté courts, oats, peas, barley, wheat, almond trees, a dust devil, goldfish, bugs, butterflies, outcroppings, wild boar…..
 
......remembering the first day, the first place, I  came across this new creature, or thing.

I make pen sketches and gouache studies using various sources:
my souvenir photos, my partners photos, brochures picked up and carried along the Camino, and images from the web: from personal and commercial websites about The Camino, government, agricultural, scientific, and historical websites, universities, clubs, societies, and Wikipedia, in English French and bits of Spanish.

Las urracas – magpies-  on the green lawns of the Opus Dei Universidad de Navarra on the outskirts of Pamplona / Iruña - a lovely parkland walk as we head out for the Alto of Perdón.

I was thrilled to see the storks, a fairy tale bird–reminds me how European fairy tales actually are. My first sighting was a nest on a pole/tower as we approached Puente la Reina.
I wonder if those poles were built for them, or what else is their purpose? 
There, the medieval church tower held 4 or 5 of their bulky nests.
We stopped under the stone archway to hear the bells and the chanting.

Studies of Cometa Rojas, Red Kite- fabulous!  We stopped and watched them swooping over the hills around Zubiri. If I were a lamb I would be nervous.

Distant barns…all that delicious pork?  A reality check.

The unique sighting of el Jabalí -wild boar -on an alternative Camino trail- “the one less travelled” (another quote from Robert Frost) with our Camino friend Terry from Seattle.

The highway barrels straight through the narrow streets of Villafranca Montes de Oca, where we are staying overnight.  Huge semis drive 2 feet away from the door of the Supermercado, little convenience store. The hungry peregrinos/pilgrims rush across for the 5pm opening to buy supplies for supper. Accidents? The residents are hopefully used to taking precautions.

Where along the green/sienna/gold band of the painting do I place the pictures?
Well, extreme right is St Jean - the beginning, extreme left is León,- the end, so I need to lay in a map of distances.


I will do this with the chart given to us by Les amis de Saint-Jacques, the friendly and informative pilgrim helper association in St Jean-Pied-de Port -French, San Juan Pie de Puerto- Spanish,  Donbane Garazi - Basque.

Happy Trails!

Within days of returning home to Victoria, Canada, after  7 weeks in Spain walking the Camino and visiting Madrid, I started “Painted Steps”, getting down on paper my visceral response to this rich experience.

I think of this blog as the Special Features extra of a DVD, a kind of  ‘making of ‘ documentary, telling the back-story, revealing the mistakes, the pleasures and challenges of the project.

I will paint many more little pictures into the middle band, studies of the paintings of Goya and Bosch, it will include  the yellow arrows and shell motif signage seen all along the Camino, elevation map, a trail map, place names.
 
When the painting is complete, the blog will stand as a kind of legend or key to the meaning of the painting.
 
I expect this painting to be complete in 6 months, slow travel, slower painting, much longer  longer the time I spent walking the Camino....

Just as it takes longer to digest a feast than to eat it.

Gouache on SOMERSET, grey/green printmaking paper, St Cuthberts Mill, England
30”h x 88i”w (2 sheets 30 x 44)     770cm x 2200cm

This is the state of the work as it stands so far …..
At the centre of the left panel is an illustration of the Dovecote- el palomar seen near Villalcazar de Sirga

I’ll walk you through the steps of getting to this point and take you along to the end of the painting.

I needed the painting to be ‘this’ wide, spreading out my arms - a wing span. I chose two sheets of a green/grey Somerset I’ve had in my shelf since the 1980’s.(saving them for this?) I laid the paper out on my long table, mixed a bunch of paint and started.
 
Using the convention of north at the top of the page, I paint east to west, right to left, beginning in St Jean Pied-de-Port, crossing the French border and traveling across Spain towards Santiago, working against the habitual current, the 'reading' right to left. I start with the Middle Band.

The Ground Colours
In the Middle Band I paint my sense of the basic colour shift of the landscape  from St.Jean to Leon.

Starting on the right, GREEN, all the richness of Basque country in the Pyrenees’ spring…

...moving towards the middle, crossing the divide between the Somerset sheets, the incredible SIENNA earth colours of the silt and clay of Rioja....

 ...then the high green-y GOLDS of Castile y Leon in the sharp sunrays of June on ripening wheat fields and adobe.

At The Top Band
After 40 days walking the Camino, we stayed a week in Madrid in the Cuatros Caminos district.
Our room was on the top floor of the Hostal Almansa a kind of ivory tower, peaceful in the city of 6 million,
Watching the ceiling fan whirling madly, watching the sky storming- wind, thunder and lightning, trying to rain, but failing in the 39c heat. 
Intense and beautiful.

So
Above the green, sienna, and gold area, I paint a band of blues and yellows: the Madrid sky,
and above the sky, I leave a band of bare paper, conventionally a place for decorative elements.

At the bottom of the paper I make another wider band with little marks, little niches in yellow grey gold, reminders of the gilded grapevine trim on the retables /reredos / retables of the golden churches.

This band will be a place for my studies of paintings from the Prado, especially Goya, and Bosch- el Bosco.

Between the gestural bottom area and the brush stroke layers of green sienna gold, I painted a hard-edged strip of neutral grey running flatly, relentlessly, across the paper.

So now I have five distinct horizontal bands, a ground, a place, an arena, for the unfolding/plotting of this journal.

To paint all this I’ve had to move up and down the seven foot length of the piece….still walking the Camino!

Stencil and Word Portrait Printmaking Workshop
“Me, Myself, and I… and now some additional information …"
with Agnes Ananichuk

Great workshop!
July
Agnes will lead us through a series of stimulating word exercises and share her process in the creation of oil-based monoprint word stencils. She will present an overview of prints where text has been used, and demonstrate the making and printing of word stencils.

Participants will be guided in inking, rolling, and printing colourful bookmarks made from their word portraits. The workshop will inspire new ideas on using text as a visual element and help develop a vocabulary to enhance the creation of “selfies”.

For the past year at GZPS Desiree has been the Intern as well as a regular studio member and has produced an amazing body of prints.
It's great to see some of her work in a more formal setting.
The prints will be up for a bit longer if anyone wants to drop by -studio hours tues eve, and daytime thursday and friday, 250-382-2186

This small aquatint etching is one of a group of three, on the same theme. For me, it contains a universe: the fire, friends, the moon and stars, the beach and the ocean beside.
I'm so pleased to have this as the latest addition to my art collection!

Wondering around the mountain surrounded 'campus' on the day of my arrival, waiting for my hotel room to be ready.
My ID DOLL against the mountain.

Taking possession of my beautiful sky-lighted studio in Glyde Hall. There are 24 artists Residency artists meeting that first day with staff, artist facilitators, Thematic faculty. Fantastic getting to know them.

The morning of my last (BAIR) day, before my studio show, I made it down to the river,the Bow, frozen at the edges.

Efren Quiroz   Curator

Basic curatorial proposal: To invite thirty artists to make a 30 in x 30 n piece in response to "Abstract painting (1985) 587-5" by the German artist Gerhard Richter.

“The name of the exhibition is "Difference and Repetition" which is a reference to the book by Gilles Deleuze. The concept is based on Deleuze's idea of how a new series brings back an older series and transforms it into something completely new, so that repetition brings about difference. The source of this series will be a single painting "Abstract painting (1985) 587-5" by the German artist Gerhard Richter (see attached image).

I chose this painting by Richter because it was created as a result of a series of unpredictable chaotic or gestural actions that make it difficult to reproduce. But it is also a work that evokes many possibilities.

It is essential that your piece be created in response to this specific Richter painting as the whole concept of the show is of a series derived from a single source and the repetitions and variations that result from it. For that reason I want the pieces to be a specific size 30 x 30 inches though the medium is open.”

The Slide Room Gallery,

Vancouver Island School of Art (VISA),

2549 Quadra Street.

November 1 - December 2, 2013.

My final piece, "Repeat after me" contains 64 spaces, the 64 possibilities of the I Ching.
Cardboard intaglio  30" x 30" with a monoprint 'copy' of the seminal Richter piece, & polymer litho.
It seemed a good opportunity to explore some of the inherent qualities of repetition and difference inherent in the printmaking medium so I made a decision to response through in printmaking: gestural monoprint, colour separation digital lithography and knife cut intaglio.

"Dis-asemblage Blue", Dis-asemblage Red, Dis-asemblage Black", 3 lithos mimicking colour separation printing process, but drawn in an expressionistic stye.The have been printed into "Repeat after me" and also are their own editions.

'Like' as in
'the same as'

Like as in appreciating, enjoying, caring about'
The softness of the image results partly from the drypoint-ish technique and partly from the colour of ink: graphite.

The ' Me' repeated, and repeated, referrs to myself, but refers to a different me each time,  I was at a different age, so different experiences, physically etc, and also seen and experienced through different relationships, am different.
The scanner can't figure out the medium; a not unusual problem when scanning etchings and other prints.

 “Nic @ Mac"
Artiste au travaille  /Artist at work. ..
on the laptop
Sugar lift on copper,
Vernis au sucre sur cuivre,
chine collé,  Papier Stonehenge
4" x 5"
Edition 8

Sugarlift
Home made sugar syrup
Watersoluble Black ink
Soap flakes

The image was drawn with a brush and sugar lift on an old copper plate.
I bit the plate in the same ferric bath that I bite zinc -Open Bite for 2 hrs 15 minutes.
I used the new coloured Stonehenge paper-"Kraft", and bright white Chinese rice paper for the chine, with Graphic Chemical Vine Black ink.

The  story of Elephant and Moon is from a story Circle, a group of 6 writers each contributing a line, one after another. I edited slightly to run a bit smoother.

Photo copies from magazine collage and watercolour

GZPS Hands on Mini Workshop (HOM)

Mittens & Poupées 
Hands on Mini Workshop
Skill-building for Printmakers

Presented by Victoria Edgarr

May 7 2013,Tuesday Eve 7 to 9pm

Make a pair of your own ‘mittens’ from aluminum - to take home.

Learn Soaking, Crunching & Smoothing techniques to prepare Tarlatan for
·       ink application (Poupées) 
·   plate wiping, etching, drypoint, collograph
·       monoprint glazing, tinting  

Materials for Mittens included

Stiff Tarlatan provided for demonstration
                            or
purchase your own at GZPS 40 x 44” $10.
-or Opus

you can bring a pencil & heavy scissors

GZPS Members $5, non-members $10.-