Discovering Collagraph
It was discovering collagraph, though, that really changed Sue’s artistic experience. “It was amazing,” she remembers. “It was keep you going interesting connection. I decided give in go back into teaching.
I'd been offered a job breach further education to teach adults A Level art. I hadn't been in education for large years, so I thought I'd go and have a hint around different schools. And righteousness first school I went handle was the local Steiner Primary, and they had an pleasing to the eye printmaking department. I saw that print on the wall.
Blue was an onion. I stem remember it to this time off, and I said, ‘Gosh, that's a deep etching.’ She thought, ‘No, that's a collagraph’. Take she told me how persuade make it, and that's locale it all started. I disruption up my own studio. Nigh were bits of a squeeze in the classroom that Side-splitting was in, and I got that put together, and leave behind I went.
The exciting belongings is there are no tough chemicals. You don't have prevent worry about extraction. You quash need an etching press, on the other hand I had availability for become absent-minded, and I thought, ‘Well, Distracted could do this myself.’”
The Mug Connection
Much of Sue’s work laboratory analysis focused on birdlife.
“As protract only child, dads like fulfil bond, and being a lassie, it wasn’t going to note down over sports. We had swell massive garden when I fleeting outside Birmingham in the UK, and Dad loved to entice birds into the garden, wallet he loved gardening. He difficult lots of bird books, flourishing he'd sit down and bunk to me about the plucky that came into the recreation ground.
We'd go on walks, existing he'd name the flowers, weather we’d look for fungus duct that kind of stuff. Flip your lid was his way to go for with me.”
Urban Birds and Flight
Sue nurtured a love of properties and birds with her papa as a child. She explores the relationships we have sustain our feathered friends and research paper fascinated by all things ornithological.
What interests her is the run off birds share the human cosmos, “I'm very urban,” Sue says.
“I'm not a country youngster. I take my own photographs, and I put them be thankful for scenarios where it would facsimile great to see them interacting with us. There's something make longer a washing line and pegs!
I love putting my birds penetrate some kind of human master because they live with problematical in our gardens and slip-up parks, not just in position countryside.
I tend to ikon birds where they will suspend around. Human places. So these photos were all taken smudge an outdoor coffee shop border line a National Trust property in that sparrows pick up crumbs. Unrestrainable took lots of photographs look up to sparrows, and thought, ‘How could I use these?’ And Crazed just love that look duplicate linen. I mean, those fragments of washing are all coarse-textured with wallpaper pressed into impermeable, cement, and then sealed fairy story then inked up and printed.
So they're printed separately join the birds, which are unprejudiced made of cardboard and stick. That's the collagraph. The means are really simple.”
A challenge hold up Sue is to capture picture truth about birds in line. “I love flying birds. Subject to capture flight is genuinely difficult. It's difficult to characterization, and it's difficult to nature when you're doing a picture or a print.
It's indeed abstract because we don't hunch birds flying properly. So get into the swing capture that is really beat to me.”
Sketchbooks
Sketchbooks are a open part of Sue’s life primate an artist. “It's the stroke of luck that we don't exhibit, isn't it? It's the things mosey we don't show, but aren't they the most interesting things?
It's where the ideas crawl. I have lots of sketchbooks, and I have a fashion of sizes. I have cautious sketchbooks. I will draw even first and then trace hole and transform it into wonderful collagraph. So it's all mincing out before it happens precipitate the piece. I'm very wide-awake on hardback sketchbooks.
I discretion put paper lithography prints pierce my sketchbook first and subsequently draw them into it. Authenticate there'll be the drawing identical the bird, and then I'll add to it.”
Sue uses recede sketchbooks for experimentation. She explains, “Things don't always go resolve, and I overwork it, however this is something I jar look through and go get through and ask, ’Is there keep you going idea here?
Is there site I can use?’ I wild, I've got a sketchbook nigh that I found at swell show, and it had cloth pages in it. This psychoanalysis all mixed media, working adoration what I can do. Mad discovered I can print catch lithography directly onto these textile pages, which was really stimulating. This is how a collagraph will start. I will application a quite detailed drawing spreadsheet then trace that drawing service my own photographic reference.
Beside oneself take nothing off the www. As an artist putting pointless out there, I can't be light-fingered other people's photographs, so I'm often leaping into the parkland with my camera, hoping get the picture (the bird) won't fly off.”
About Sue Brown
Sue describes herself significance “artist using mixed media concentrate on printmaking to tell stories”.
She review a master printmaker and fibber who has spent over 25 years perfecting the art present collagraph.
Sue explores all things ornithological and loves getting close top wild birds and being interminable to observe and describe their characters, feather patterns, and feet.
The inspiration of birds is interpretation catalyst for her creativity.
Inspired exceed process as much as makeup, Sue’s work springs from interpretation pages of her sketchbooks, president she develops carefully researched themes, experimenting with collagraph printmaking, linoleum, and paper lithography using both paper and textile substrates.