Back in June/July last year, just before my trip to the U.S., I had started begun experimenting with small-scale monoprints, using my little XCut XPress print press at home.

Those results were so encouraging that, on my return to the UK, I wanted to try some larger prints using brayers on acrylic sheet at around A1 size. As usual, I didn’t really plan how I would go about this – I just gathered a few brayers of different widths and degrees of hard or soft rubber and got to work. Back in the Print Room at the University of Lincoln, I experimnted with coating and overcoating roller marks to see whether and how black ink would mix or resist, depending on their viscosity.

Torn pieces of Fabriano 5 paper, ready to be printed

Large sheet of plastic, inked using brayers

Torn pieces laid onto the inked sheet, ready for printing

Printed pieces

On my residency in America, I had played with tearing strips of paper and lying those over the pre-inked acrylic plate. I’m employing that method again here, and intending to find a way of collaging these pieces together post-print to create some unique images that could be displayed within or outside the traditional picture frame. Beacuse the paper pieces only covered a portion of the brayer marks, the printed pieces have a unique, randomised quality which extend right to the edges.

Some of the pieces remind me of fragments unearthed or discovered at archaeological digs. These could be very interesting as single images, combined with pieces, or used as chine collé elements.

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