Stump #183 (Ghost), Monoprint, 30cm x 35cm
£120.00
One-off monoprint — only one available
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‘Stump #183 (Ghost)’ is from my ongoing series of over 300 gelliplate monoprints called the Tree Portraits, and originates from a photo of an extraordinary dead stump on Wanstead Flats.
The latter of the Series, this one included, moved out of the streets, & into the parks & woodlands as my research further informs the project, & my interest in the wider ecology.
London’s Pollarded street trees (predominantly Lime & Plane, chosen for their resilience to pollution) have recently become something of a multi-valent representation of so many things we do/don’t know about ecology to me; & nature’s real place in our world.
Their appearance defines an ongoing relationship with Man; indeed, many of them have a cartoon human appearance, with distinct heads, arms & bodies; and because of this back & forth, dynamic process of growth & removal over time the Trees seem to dance in a particular direction, as they struggle (vainly) to grow bigger, both outwards & upwards. They seem to me like huge Bonsai.
There are wonderful areas where growth & weight make the Trees bulge & the bark appears more like a liquid, flowing down around the younger pollarded areas with gravity. This can only really be appreciated from the base, looking straight up.
This gets more interesting to me regarding the process of printing them, & the subject, the longer I do them.
There’s a certain rhythm to doing these in such volume – I’ve tried to represent every tree in my surrounding streets – the repetition of shapes, forms, movement & texture reminds me of a cruder form of Chinese Sung painting, where artists would spend years representing birds, flowers & landscapes thousands of times, until the process takes over & that Ssubject metamorphoses, & almost becomes something else.
1 in stock
