I was watching Jack’s shadow walking in a meadow when the rest of us were all over the pavement. It took a while to get some photos, passing traffic kept hiding the subject.
Walking on water?
Making test prints on the hottest day of the year isn’t a good idea. I wanted to know if the little dots looked like a road surface, so I began inking quite early. This hasn’t captured the idea I saw while walking, but it’s OK.
I’ve realised it’s now forty years since my art college graduation. There’s a certificate somewhere on the bookshelf that says I have a degree in Fine Art. The certificate doesn’t look like a genuine document so it fits well with my dissertation about art forgery.
“But what is Fine Art?” people ask. No idea, but it’s a term used in frilly lettering outside galleries showing the kind of art that would have been sneered at by any of our tutors. In 1984, anything looking like a craft was discouraged. Printmaking was a grey area, but it was tolerated.
Fine Art printed with linseed ink on paper
For the first few years after graduation I was a member of some printmaking studios. There were group exhibitions and teaching sessions. Then there were the ‘back to work’ schemes. These assumed that all work took place in an office, so there were basic maths and literacy classes. Meanwhile, I missed deadlines for creative opportunities which required proof of concept and skills. Helpful jobcentre ladies would ring prospective employers, saying “She’s got a degree in graphic design!”. When I pointed at my CV (again), they’d say “isn’t that the same thing?”.
During the last four decades I’ve collected a lot of rejection letters. Some of them were quite expensive.
berry daines 