Chris Allan: Drypoints from Nature: ONLINE EXHIBITION

Drypoints from Nature

"These prints are based on full-size studies from life, mostly in watercolour pencil. The flora are cut from the hedgerow and drawn in the studio. The fauna are variously drawn from life and from museum specimens or adapted from photographs and book illustrations. But a pile of sketches do not make art - one needs models on which to build ideas. Both the format and the content relate to the hanging scrolls developed by oriental "Bird and Flower" painters over centuries. The verisimilitude of the Dutch C.17 flower painters and the technical prowess of the best engravers of botanical Flora always astonish me, while the wildlife specialists of the past two centuries - from Audubon to Thorburn, Tunnicliffe and more, set a benchmark which I struggle to equal.

All contribute to the purpose of portraying nature at close quarters. Not a nature only to be revealed on a TV trip to the tropics, but one that can delight us all in every hedge and ditch, or at the bottom of the garden. The familiar natural world around us seems annually transient, yet is reassuringly resilient. Brambles, bullfinches and bumble bees were all flourishing in Britain long before the first human foot ever crushed a daisy, and I'm sure will flourish long after our departure.

Drypoints are among the simplest of prints to make. You scratch the design into the surface of a polished copper plate with a hardened steel point. The furrows you cut, and the displaced metal  (called burr)  thrown up by the point will both hold ink, and are printed like any engraving or etching. However, the processes of inking and printing soon wear the image down, limiting the number of good impressions .  Only the most foolhardy would choose drypoint for a series of large elaborately worked plates…

At an intermediate stage where the composition is clear and firm, but not too heavily worked, I take proofs in a suitable base colour for hand-colouring. The watercolour washes amplify the underlying structure without looking muddy. Additional work then strengthens the design to create a further edition in monochrome."

Chris Allan graduated from Edinburgh University and College of Art in 1970. His career was spent in the museum world, at Manchester University and subsequently Glasgow University.  He began making prints at Glasgow Print Studio in the 90's. He is the author of Elizabeth Blackadder Prints (Lund Humphries, 2003), and in 2014 designed a reconstruction of Mackintosh's lost decorative scheme for Glasgow Art Club. He has works in several public collections including the British Museum and HM Government's loan collection.

All works are available to view in person at the ground floor gallery.

Tuesday to Saturday 10 - 5.30pm  -  sales@glasgowprintstudio.co.uk

Glasgow Print Studio offers OwnArt interest-free art loans to facilitate purchase of these work. Please contact us for further information.