GROUND CONTROL TO MAJOR TOM......
I ask myself why I like botanical gelli printing.
The answers are multiple. I suppose the first being that during the course of a creative life, different processes capture your focus and you find yourself a conduit to them. I first practised printmaking at college - several decades ago. I loved it. We made etchings and simple silk screens but then, college was left behind and the world of commercial art and the necessity to make a living took over.
The second reason is nature. That old cliché - “Can’t see the wood for the trees”. Know it? That’s us humans. Well, many of us anyway. We walk around this amazing planet, surrounded by a myriad of miracles, without seeing at all. Instead we are obsessed by our co-worker’s new shoes or what Kim Kardaschian ate for breakfast yesterday or who divorced who in the zoo. We rush blindly onward, assailed daily by the tsunami of social media.
As a child, I was lucky enough to have both a mother and a grandmother who were green-fingered gardeners. And a father who grew up on an English farm and was in tune with the birds and plants (and who grew fine potatoes). I learned the latin names of things by osmosis and grew things from seeds and cuttings from an early age. Later on, walking in the wild, or just around the garden, I could name the trees and plants and knew most birds by their song. It was almost like having a second skin. That world I inhabited for most of my life was my mantle, my protection, my familiar.
Then I transplanted myself to England and became an alien species overnight. Plucked out of my natural African habitat and walking in a new one, I felt alone. Surrounded by new beauty, fascinated by it, but apart from it. Undaunted, I joined the National Trust, bought several books about the English countryside and started from scratch. At first this was quite hard going - learning becoming more difficult as we age - but slowly, things started to sink in and more and more revealed itself.
What really changed things was the discovery of gelli printing. I began by printing weeds and grasses gathered from the roadside or verges. Looking them up and learning their names as I transferred their graceful forms onto paper in ink. There is nothing quite like the Great Reveal - lifting the paper to see what has moved from one surface to another. I am so grateful for the meditative quality of the whole process.
It begins with a foraging stroll: Finding new forms to gather and try. Never taking more than you need, selecting with mindfullness. Next, once home, emptying your small bag of treasures out onto a tray and sorting them into size, shape or type. Deciding what will work together and choosing the right mix of ink. The tacky sound of the ink rolling onto the plate... Arranging the plants... The pressing, gently and evenly down, feeling the soul of the plant shaping the ink. Removing the excess ink and the gorgeous negative shapes that are lifted with this first print. At last, the final print - the ghost, often astonishing in its detail and form.
Some things print beautifully, others don’t. Some days the process flows and you make magic. Other days, nothing cooperates with you and you end up with a pile of rejects or “to-be-worked-ons”. But overall, this printmaking process has introduced me to a new technique; rekindled my passion for the print process; reawakened my curiosty and willingness to learn. It has provided a necessary escape in this crazy world of COVID19 and other unpleasant truths. It has allowed me a portal into a new world in which I do not feel quite such an alien.
It’s a healthy addiction, I think.
