Firstly I have some follow on news from my previous blog ‘Pen Pals’. Thanks to my lovely pen pal Alan (whose work features in that blog) I have a picture of Phillip Poole, the man who sold me my mixed box of antique pen nibs. Alongside that I have a little picture drawn for me by my good friend and wonderful illustrator Stu McLellan.
Presently I am reeling a bit from being a living exhibit at Art in Action, one of the biggest and best art festivals around. I look upon demonstrating as being a seriously important part of what I do. It’s certainly a serious factor in selling my work. It’s important to remember that printmaker doesn’t mean much out there in the non-printmaker world. Print tends to be what your computer does if you remember to stick the cables into your laptop (which I often don’t). Print to lots of people means any quantity, any colour and any size. Hand cut, hand pulled limited edition prints still get asked for ‘a bit bigger and can you do it with a blue background?’ or better still ‘can you crop out those trees and put that hedge from the other print in because I like that better?’
There’s a quiet pleasure in showing people that an original print has its own integrity: it is what it is and has as much validity and presence as any other art form. Anything I can do to convince people that we printers are skilled artists, not button pressers or poor relations of painters has to be a plus. Yes, it does mean I won’t manipulate or resize my work, or indeed reproduce a print in any other way than a greetings card, but that’s the way I like it and that’s the way my customers like it too!
Philip Poole used to have a shop at the top end of Drury Lane and he was The Nib King. He had thousands of different nibs but the only ones I ever wanted were called Orientals. Mr Poole was very cagey about letting any of these go because he needed hundreds in order to supply his Best Customer – Ralph Steadman. Steadman attacked every drawing with such gusto that he got through Orientals as if there was no tomorrow.