WAYNE WHITE

One artist I've recently come across who's work really speaks to me is Wayne White. His unique blend of wit and charm is best realised in the fantastic series entitled 'Word paintings'. These consist of a found collection of oil paintings which would not look out of place in your grandmothers house were it not for the interjecting of white's own personality. With great skill and craftsmanship White works his own typography and signage on top of and intertwined with the painting as it hung originally. These imperfect yet painstaking letter forms are not merely dropped on top of but interact with the surroundings beautifully as if you had just stumbled across a woodland scene with 20ft high letters sticking out of a stream amongst the trees. But really its the context of what is said that I particularly like about his work. The averageness or relate-ability to some of the slogans is so close to real life that it really does make you smile. For instance I particularly like 'Pot dealer small talk' referring to the awkward minute of small talk one must make when buying cannabis. For me it's these great little truths that really complete the work for me. And when juxtaposed with these quaint little scenes it just creates this really charming blend which I would love to hang on my wall.

I think the many similarities between what White and I are doing is why I like his work so much. The forced formality of the frame and semiotics of what you expect to see when looking at one of these nice but average paintings work so well against the style of letter and what is spoken. It's a very similar concept in this way to my print series. I also like the way that some are funny; some aren't funny, but none are trying too hard to be funny. He's not trying to hard to impress you with his wit rather just keep a light-hearted edge. I also really don't like the idea of an artist shouting 'look at me look at me' in an attention seeking way, he quietly and confidently makes an understated point, within the confines of the very formal frame. Hopefully people will say this about my work when it is hung aswell.

PRINTMAKING PROJECT SEMESTER A

By this point I had done all the necessary research into a number of relevant artists on how they went about creating work which elevated an object to a level of imortance through their work. I wasn't going to include actual objects, rather my own interpretations from memory of what these objects looked like. It would be drawn in a kind of loose but precise one line style. I wanted to create a print series which engaged in celebrating those unsung objects from our day to day. And from my research I had worked out that the way to do that was entirely down to the presentation. In my case that meant more than just the framing of the print but the way Icomposed the object on the page, typography and wording of the sentences. I knew that for it to work I had to write in what was quite a formal and to the point way. The words I used would be under scrutiny so I knew they had to be considered and not just thrown together. I also had decided that I would use a particularly minimal style the execute these prints and that the original idea of the coloured shapes behind wouldn't work. There had to be a sense of clarity, which involved no clutter but complete balance and harmony within the elements. My sketchbook pages were a good place to test out the structure of how I was going to realise this, I find working in a sketchbook really useful for planning ideas.

(my scanner stopped working which was really cool)

So by this point I had all the illustrations done and had decided what the text was going to say, it was now at the point that I had to decide weather to use typography or handwriting. In the end I decided that although hand written text would look good it wouldn't achieve the same respect and command within the frame that my handwriting would. I chose Optima in all caps for its authoritative tone and formality without being overly decorative and fancy like say, Bodoni. I seem to always have a load of trouble with my screens and although this was only a very simple one colour design the print process was long and laborious. I think I need to work on the measuring of my paper as this would have saved me a lot of time and effort in the after process. Eventually they were finished though and below was the finished result after framing and hanging:

Its pretty glaringly obvious that the prints weren't aligned correctly in the frame. This was meant to be done at the framers, but I accept the responsibility and should have checked them sooner than the morning of hanging. I almost took it out of the show but decided against it in the end and I don't think it was really the end of the world just a minor thing to learn from for next time. I think the project and sebsequently the show was a success and on the whole I was sort of pleased with my work.

During the show a 1st year student liked my work and conducted this interview with me for her course. I'll include it because it might just re-iterate the decisions and processes behind some of my pieces.

When did you get interested in print making?

“Well, I don’t like how a lot of graphic design nowadays doesn’t ever seem to leave the screen so it doesn’t ever get to print or it doesn’t have that kind of tactile nature, which I think is really important, and it’s a shame that a lot of work is only ever for internet flyers or just designed for the internet, to be viewed only on screen so I really liked the idea of taking a class that helped me create work that was sort of connected to my graphic design or even furthering on from it but there was more of learning a process involved with it, but to answer your question directly, I actually took printmaking as an after-thought which I had on the day when I arrived to UEL, as I wasn’t really aware of the facilities, I was just like ‘Yeh, that look’s really cool’ like I’ve always really wanted to do screen prints and etchings and I had done a bit of lino printing before, and as I had

enjoyed it I thought it would be a good way to kind of, physically create design, that you can hang, move around and even has more of a purpose.”

Would you say you have a style?

“I’d say that indirectly my work has a style, because even though the printmaking work I’ve done is technically more art, they sort of have a concept behind it but the approach which I took is much different to how I would have approached a graphic design project where you have a brief and you try to work out the best way to answer the question and kind of like, do something really thought provoking but also simplistic at the same time. This printmaking project is more of me using my illustrational skills and so it’s kind of like, art that has a very graphic grounding. So I think you can tell, that it’s specifically my work because of the way I draw, it is very, like, stylised without meaning to be, it’s usually just like line drawings that have a very bold look as I don’t really like pencils, I would

only use pens so I have kind of gotten used to being very confident with my lines when I draw and it’s just like, the first line is always right. Or if it’s not right, then my work has a bit of imperfection in it and that would then be apart of it so looking at just my printmaking work, the style of it is like, art, with big design influences and is always very bold, I don’t really do shading or like, subtlety, it’s look is always quite strong.”

You mentioned your work has “big design influences”, can you name any?

“Well a big influence for me, particularly on this printmaking project was the artist/designer named Wayne White and he does really nice work in which he gets old oil paintings that he could find at like, a car boot sale or something in which he then does this really bold, three dimensional text and integrates it into the oil painting and what he works into them, these kind of nice little phrases that are just so irrelevant and so like true to life and then executed so precisely and perfectly. I like his work because it just has a slight bit of wit in it and I like the playing of wording which he does and putting it with this kind of, subtle humor without trying too hard. I think you can see his influence

through the development in my work as I only found him after I had started making the print series which can be seen as quite similar. But it also makes me feel good, that I haven’t consciously gone and copied him almost? But just when I saw it, it was exactly bang on, what I was looking for, and I’d say he was definitely a big influence, indirectly since I will take it on board through the process of my print work, which is

still being done at the moment.”

So, can you briefly explain to me, the thinking behind this printmaking project which you are exhibiting at the moment?

“Well the thinking behind the project that I just hung today in the exhibition space was that I wanted to do a project that was almost like, a little celebration of those little things that are kind of, in our everyday life, their very minor as I didn’t it to be the

very obscure things which you’d think of or the really obvious, just those little bits and bobs that are always just there, things that you’d never really buy but they just always seem to appear and just do a piece of work that elevates those kind of, recognizable pieces. As if it was a person behind the scenes always working really hard for you, ya know, giving recognition to an object that always does its function well and it’s just kind of like, a bit of an unsung little hero. Then to create the print in a

way that was formal enough, the semiotic language of the way I’ve created the prints follows the function of what I’m trying to say by the way I’ve laid them out and even the set of the type is giving it that level of importance which I wanted to show through this set of prints, in a way of saying thank you to this “unsung hero”. But at the same time, I don’t take myself too seriously and so I tried to also, at the same time, inject some minor kind of sarcasm and wit in there, going back to my influence

from Wayne White, but then again without looking too confident and like I’m trying to hard. But at this stage, to be honest I’ve stared at them too much and think their getting to be really, dull and boring and just really pissing me off but I’m just hoping that when someone sees it for the first time, they’ll see what I saw when starting this printmaking project as it’s not supposed to do anything but just let someone have a little quirk on the side of their mouth and provide a bit of entertainment.”

Is there a piece in your series which you would feel is your best and why?

“Yeh well actually, really annoyingly, I had a bit of trouble with my screen where I tried to create this new print series about twice now and each time I’ve had some like, freak accident that just messed it all up and ended up setting the work back by a few weeks and then with half term, which was two weeks, and all the bank holiday mondays we’ve had off (and the royal wedding) with my print class being on a monday, all this hasn’t helped with this series, making me so behind and unorganised that unfortunately, I haven’t been able to sit down and realise

my favourite piece of work. So I’ll even give you my sketchbook so you can see an even clearer understanding of my work, because with the exhibition the work is so behind that my sketches will show you kind of, what the designs are going to look like. They are really at the stage of me just drawing a little preliminary sketch of what the prints are going to be but I do feel like this is my favorite work from the year and I mean, both my modules have been quite self lead like, the brief was to create a body of work that can be hung as a series and I just thought that was great to kind of, have that freedom although I do feel slightly upset with myself that I haven’t pushed this project to the stage I was hoping it would be at by now but I mean, this is the kind of thing that will happen with printmaking, it can go wrong very easily and again, it’s a different situation when you’re creating digital work or even just pencil sketches or something, there is a certain degree

of printmaking which is out of your control like even just sharing the room with other people can lead to problems happening where work gets ruined etc. And I mean, it’s all kind of like, just learn from you’re experiences really like, I’ll know for next time how to time it better, keep a better eye on my work etc. But yeh, going off the point when looking at my sketches I can show you what my favourite work is from the year, but this new series is definitely one of my favourite projects so far. A few in particular like one called “Threat level orange” which I will show you in the exhibition, and then there’s also one which

has a sort of biblical reference, and the second series which I’ve done is one of my favourites as it’s poking a bit of fun at America, cause I just got back from the states and it was just a load of things I heard over intercoms or saw as signs and so when I was over there it sort of struck a little cord in me and so I kind of like, wrote them down and now I’ve turned them into a little piece of work so. Really pleased with that series.”