Praeterita

June 16th was Bloomsday, the annual celebration of James Joyce's novel Ulysses , the action of which takes place on one day in Dublin in 1906. I've written before about the set of etchings I made back in the late 1990s, based on the Nighttown chapter of Ulysses. But after posting images of these etchings via social media during the most recent Bloomsday, I realised I could still say something about the various things that influenced my particular interpretation of Joyce's text. When I started planning the project in 1997, I was aware of a few other artists' visual responses to the book, such as Robert Motherwell's attractive and entirely abstract etchings, some hasty and uninspired lithographs by Matisse , and (the best ones, in my opinion) semi-abstract etchings by Mimmo Paladino: Mimmo Paladino, from Ulysses I started by narrowing down to one chapter: the Nighttown chapter, which takes place in the red light district of Dublin, and parallels the Circ...

Here is a short video of me in my studio, talking about me, my art, and my influences.

When so much of making work as an artist involves slogging away in a room with no idea if it's ever going to be seen by the world outside, it's satisfying when a little success comes your way. I am very proud that two of my handmade books were acquired recently by the Joan Flasch Artist's Book Collection at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago. This collection is one of the most renowned collections of books made by artists in the United States, so it's a huge honour to be included. Here is one of the pieces, an interleaved slit accordion fold of two etchings: And here is the other, a heavily collaged accordion book bound together by sisal: Each piece is now being catalogued and digitized, and at some point in the future they will be on display at the library, possibly in the company of books by artists such as Joseph Beuys: And Christo: And Richard Tuttle: I have paintings in my studio that are six feet square, yet it's these two smal...

Last weekend, my wife Patricia Ann McNair and I taught a one-day journal and sketchbook class at the Interlochen College of Creative Arts . The ICCA runs classes for adults in a purpose-built space on the campus of the internationally renowned Interlochen Center for the Arts. The photo above shows one of the participants in the act of making a 10-second drawing, the first activity of the day.