Share a hobby you’ve picked up recently — what got you into it?
I fairly recently took up relief printing, particularly experimenting with chine collé.
I’ve always enjoyed making images – drawing in particular, rather than simply taking them.
With relief printing there is something physically pleasing about cutting into lino, and deciding what must remain and what must disappear, but in reverse. The inking it, laying the paper down and discovering the result. You can plan carefully, but the print still has a life of its own.
Chine collé adds another layer to that. A thin piece of paper — coloured, patterned or simply a different tone — is bonded into the print as it goes through the press or is burnished. Suddenly a fairly stark relief print can acquire another plane of colour or texture without losing the strength of the carved line. I like that combination enormously.
The subjects I keep returning to are hardly accidental. Castles, for one. I have lived around castles, worked in them, wandered through them and photographed them for most of my life, so battlements, towers, gateways and great slabs of masonry naturally find their way into the prints. They suit relief printing too: strong silhouettes, deep shadow, stone against sky.
Then there are trees. Bare winter trees especially. A tree can become almost calligraphic when you start thinking about it as something to cut: trunk, branch, twig, negative space. I can see why artists such as Thomas Bewick and Eric Ravilious remain so compelling. They understood how much landscape can be suggested with surprisingly little.
And, occasionally, I work from life models. That takes the process in another direction altogether. Instead of the hard geometry of a castle or the branching structure of a tree, there is the challenge of the curve and weight of the human body.
What got me into it, I think, was the combination of drawing, design and craft. It makes me look harder. You cannot carve everything. You have to decide what matters. There’s also a technical aspect to it. And you get something you can then sell – many times over.
Google JV.Art for my prints for sale.
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