Praeterita

Text derived from writer Patricia Ann McNair's daily prompt series , #4, We were never sure what happened: We were never sure what happened . Because when I picked up the phone, she was still babbling in a high pitched hysterical voice so that I couldn’t make out the words, only her name. I handed the phone over to my mother and said, “It’s Linda.” My mother listened, saying “Oh God, oh God” into the mouthpiece of the big yellow phone, from which I could hear Linda’s voice, tinny and distorted now, still wailing in long sustained notes. My mother went next door, to where Linda lived, and didn’t return until hours later. Ashen-faced, she told me what she knew.  Linda had finally locked her violent husband out of the house, telling him that he was out for good this time.  Her husband, a soldier who had just completed his third tour in war-torn Northern Ireland, had bellowed through the door that he would get her back somehow.  The next morning, their teenage so...

I started a few more jogged pamphlets in my studio this week. I did two using the 'vortex' print mentioned in a previous post: And I took some double-side prints made a few years ago and stitched them together to make alternating colours: Though I now realise that the best method is to print everything on the inside pages first, and then print the 'cover' image last.

On my last visit to my studio, I started making some books based on the sketches and photos that I did in January. I used the technique that I almost always use these days: taking xeroxes of the drawings and sketches, playing around with the resolution at Kinko's, then transferring them to paper using the paper-litho transfer process. Here's the first one (works in progress, again): The image is from a map of all the coal mines in the area of north-east England where I grew up. I printed it in ochre on four strips of paper, then in blue on four more strips of paper, and then braided them together so that you see alternating squares of different coloured maps. I'm going to layer more strips of prints over them, then sew them all together on a base. The idea I have in mind is that you will peel back the upper strips until this is revealed at the bottom of the pile. Then I took the 'vortex' picture that I drew at the beginning of January, and printed it on so...

Text inspired by writer Patricia Ann McNair's daily journal prompt #3 , And this is how they get you : And this is how they get you: waiting for you to step off the bus after school, watching you from behind the fence that rings the potato fields, snowballs embedded with sharp stones in their hands, watching for the moment when the bus pulls away, and you walk a few yards along the grass next to the bus stop, looking for a break in the traffic (there isn’t much traffic at this hour on a dark winter afternoon), and as you cross the road, they appear over the top of the fence and start hurling the snowballs at you with pinpoint accuracy, the first one catching you on the back of the neck so hard that you feel the warm blood trickling out of the cut, the next few snowballs thudding against your coat as you duck, and stagger, and try to dodge the assault, managing to keep your head from being hit again, but only at the expense of your back, and your elbows, and your calves, which ...

Text inspired by writer Patricia Ann McNair's  daily journal prompt #2: I always thought . I always thought that my grandfather was a war hero, who had fought in World War II and killed German soldiers during a midnight raid on his unit, when they were cornered with their backs against a stone cliff and only dense trees in front of them, obscured by the thick darkness of night on the Italian mountains, their attackers blasting away at them from the natural cover, disposing of five men in my grandfather’s platoon in seconds, and presenting my grandfather with the certain prospect of meeting the same fate, until with a loud roar he charged forward at the wall of invisible attackers, the bullets pinging around him but missing him, as he let loose with his Sten machine gun, swinging the barrel from side to side like a fireman dousing a blaze from above, not knowing what he was hitting or where he was going, until he heard the click that told him his magazine was empty, and he rea...

Neo-color pastel and pencil on panel "It all started when the military police came at dawn to tell us about the accident." Text inspired by writer Patricia Ann McNair's journal prompt #32 .

Neo-color pastel and pencil on paper "On our block there were pieces of coal lying all over the street." Text inspired by writer Patricia Ann McNair's daily journal prompt #39 .

Neo-color pastels on handmade paper "Here's how it all started". Text taken from writer Patricia Ann McNair's daily journal prompt #32 .

Drypoint on aluminium, 7" x 5" "It was hard to breathe, pressed so tightly together against the fleshy walls, our two tiny forms bathed inside and outside by the amniotic fluid, deafened by the hammering thud of a heartbeat, tantalised by the distant sound of music and voices." Text inspired by writer Patricia Ann McNair's daily journal prompts. Prompt # 16: It was hard to breathe .   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Neo-color pastels The boys liked to stand with their faces turned towards the sky, near the old church, down in the dene, as the hawk sprang from its nest, sailed in a wide arc towards the smaller birds, and brought its prey to earth in a splash of blood. (Text derived from writer Patricia Ann McNair's writing prompt series . Prompt #6: "The boys liked..." )   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Derived from writer Patricia Ann McNair's daily journal prompt: Prompt #4, January 11, 2012: We were never sure what happened . "We were never sure what happened. They say the army jeep slid on some ice and went out of control. They also said the driver was drunk, and didn't notice how close he was to the truck right in front. The man fast asleep in the passenger seat never had a chance. The personnel from the army base who were charged with giving us the news said that his body was badly scarred and burned from the accident. An ID had already been made, so there was no need to go through the trauma of seeing him in that state."   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

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The day is beautiful, o do not be afraid. They have only gone for a long walk.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Inspired by author  Patricia Ann McNair's 2012 writing prompts . Number 1: On Another Winter Morning. "On another winter morning I might not have gone to the firing range. It was Arcticly cold, the wind slicing down all the way from Scandinavia and across the North Sea, arriving at our village with an audible whistling, whipping up plumes of snow from the fallow fields around the mines. But Grandad liked shooting, and he said he wanted to teach us, so on a Saturday morning in January my mother piled me, my brother, and my grandfather into the Mini, and we drove to a place about an hour north of the village. I remember a long low building, walls sagging slightly, a dark interior, and the tinny ‘crack’ made by the low caliber pistols. My mother and my grandfather paid their fee, put on the padded earclips, and went up to their allotted firing station. Each station was really one long countertop, separated into booths by flimsy partitions. My brother and I were told we could ...

I want to take a photograph of the past. I want to capture the streaming photons of a long-dead event. But what lens could I use? Which direction would I point the camera? How long would the exposure need to be? Supposing such a piece of equipment existed, what would I end up with anyway?   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

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"Surrounding the mining town where I grew up were mountains of coal, rising like ziggurats against the grey skies. Some of them were so big they had smouldering fires buried deep within them fires that never went out."   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

"A journey into the undiscovered country, the cavern deep inside the mountain, the labyrinth where monsters lurk, the cave at the ocean's floor, the door into the attic, a place of secrets, a place of danger: ourselves."   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

"I dreamed about a swirling vortex, a whirlpool of black water that filled my field of vision entirely, and as I dreamed I felt that I was being sucked towards the gaping tunnel, whirling around in descending circles, pulling me by the legs until I could no longer resist and finally sucking me into its dark, terrifying maw as if I were a fly being flushed down a sink."   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

So as I was working on this picture on which I painted all the texture and the dot patterns: ... I felt emboldened, for some reason, to start drawing all over it, using a fine point brush and airbrush paints: I have an idea about where this all came from, though I don't know why it came forth today and not earlier. I've done a lot of automatic drawing in the last few years, some of it random, some of it clearly related to the personal narrative work. Mostly I felt able to combine figurative and non-figurative elements in prints, and artist's books, rather than in paintings. Over Christmas, I read part of Xenophon's 'Anabasis', regarded as one of the greatest texts of the ancient Greek world. Without going into too much detail about the story, the main thing that stayed with me was the idea of the word 'Anabasis' which can be translated as 'journey to the interior'. Most of what I am trying to do in the studio ultimately is just that: a voya...