This print was created in conjunction with the Glasgow Print Studio 50th Anniversary Here & Now Legacy Project. "The idea for my 50/50 print originated from observing the construction of some new buildings opposite the Glasgow Print Studio on Argyle Street. Since the start of 2022 I had been taking photographs of the buildings as their construction progressed, from the foundations being dug, to the steel reinforcements rising; watching concrete columns poured and the formwork pulled away, the process fascinated me.

Eventually the service cores were erected, the large hollow columns which hold the elevator shafts, stairways, water pipes and electrical cables, as well as providing circulation from the bottom to the top of buildings. I spent some time photographing and drawing these monolithic, bare, concrete towers of which there were now several. I then began my process of extracting shapes and ideas from these images, exploring multiple ideas, such as translating the floors of the buildings into layers of a print; exploring the symmetry and simplicity of the columns in contrast to the visually complicated formwork, all the time overlapping these ideas visually, introducing colour and gradually viewing these ideas from a formalistic point of view and searching for balance.

The number of digital variations I created outnumbered many previous prints, and only when I began to simplify my ideas did a composition begin to appear which caught my attention and felt like something which was finally holding its own. The final print is quite minimal, using three colours and overlapping these to create a balanced composition of just five shapes."

Richard Marsden was born in Leeds in 1994. He studied for a Foundation Diploma in Art and Design at Leeds College of Art, going on to a BA in Graphic Arts and Design course at Leeds Beckett University, then an MLitt in Fine Art Practice (Printmaking) at the Glasgow School of Art. Soon after completing his Masters he became a member of the Glasgow Print Studio to continue to develop his practice; since 2021 he has also worked in the Glasgow Print Studio gallery as a Gallery Assistant.

His practice derives from an interest in architecture. Over the last few years he has been specifically studying the construction of buildings, finding diagrams of construction methods and taking photographs of construction sites to study the functional elements of architecture which are often hidden when buildings are complete. He uses drawing and digital software to play around with the shapes from these images, adding colour and allowing various compositional ideas to cross over and develop naturally into something sometimes quite removed from the original source material. The final compositions of the prints are completely formalistic, searching to create balance while still maintaining visual interest.