Featured Artist

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Featured Artist - Elisabeth Bond

As a visual artist I started as a painter but soon realised that I was struggling to define what I wanted to say through the freedom of paint whereas the limitations imposed by printmaking were supportive and provided a channel for my ideas. Now the struggle is about breaking free of the limitations, rather than with the means of expression.
I have always been drawn to landscape, particularly the extremes of mountains and estuaries. I became fascinated by the structure of mountains and how the roads wind round the contours, and did my first etching in 2008.

Curve (79 x 69cms)

With linocuts, the technical simplicity was exciting – how to stretch the medium as far as possible. 'Estuary' comes from early 2009 and is my first example of going beyond the straightforward cut. 'Broken' goes further and here I started etching the surface of the lino with caustic soda ( a method invented by Michael Rothenstein a founder of PmC )

More Snow on the Way

Broken (49 x 36cms)

I increasingly realised that the structure of landscape mirrors that of human interaction, be it personal or political ie. an organic structure shifts and changes until a new structure is formed. In 2010, with this theme, I began a series of 3 linocuts. 'As it Might Be', then 'As it Is' and I am now working on 'As it Will be'. None of them show much hope for humanity but for me it's important to engage with the world - 'I am involved in mankind', to quote John Donne - it's one thing we can do to effect change however minimal it might be.

As it Might be (59 x 47cms)

My woodcuts started with a bang – a large print (190 x 100 cms) 'Cracked Earth'. I cut it from a piece of ply working with frozen fingers through the winter of 2008/9. When I came to print it, I covered the paper with potato cuts to give a background.
After this I started working on pieces of discarded wood littered around London. A lot are pieces of plank left behind by scaffolders and the rough texture is ideal for depicting crows, of which there are also a lot around. I've done a series of 6 crow prints, that are fun and unchallenging.

I try to link the subject of my wood cuts to where I found the wood. 'Where the Bomb Fell' is from 2 off-cuts from a skip where a post-war stretch of houses tell their own story.

Now that I'm fairly confident with cutting I need to concentrate on the process of printing. So far what I've done, in terms of colour and tone, has been mainly straightforward, clearly delineated colour areas within the one block.
'Buoys in Wood' another large woodcut from last summer is another example.

With my latest linocut ‘World Today’ I’m looking forward to spending time in the print room experimenting with colour and ways of applying it.

I would worry if I felt I had nothing more to learn!