| Christine | Farmer |

Someone today described my earlier work ‘A House in Cradley‘ as an “inside-out house”, and this could easily describe the idea I have for my new drawings. I thought I’d share a little of the work in progress on this one. I don’t tend to do too many preliminary sketches, and jot as many ideas down in words as I do in images. Here (below, left) are some of my notes relating to the new project.

Looking back through my diary I see that the idea has been with me for a few months now, in various forms. It’s a project which has had to stay on the back burner while I set up my studio, but it’s nice to have it there simmering away and developing over time. There are pages and pages of these jottings, here are a couple of them:

I’m currently working on the window which will open into the sky on the new drawing (right hand photos). This is one of the sketches for the window: as you can see I’m using a dolls house window as a model here, but I’ll probably also be photographing some of the sash windows in my house, too. Somewhere in there I want to get lots of woodgrain, and perhaps some fingerprints too, but I’m not quite sure how yet.

Given the amount of material I already have in my art diary it’s very likely I’ll be working on variations of this drawing for a considerable time, and produce many works from it. At the moment my plan is to make the first piece a stipple drawing, but I am considering also sketching in the window in the sky with pen and ink, as well as other ideas. I’m also planning on building some ‘sets’, using dolls house furniture and dolls house windows, the ideas for which you may just be able to make out in the pages from my diary.

To see some of the earlier photographs which will be used in this project, take a look at the chair on Clee Hills post. 

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I recently visited the ‘Tale-Pieces’ exhibition of the work of the self-taught wood engraver and naturalist Thomas Bewick, at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. ‘Tale-piece’ was Bewick’s amusing name for the extremely small engravings (just an inch or so in size) which he used to finish off chapters of his books on Natural History.

The magnifying glasses handed out as one enters the gallery really are necessary, as it is astonishing the amount of detail which Bewick captured in these tiny vignettes. The works, displayed two to a framed page, mostly depict scenes from country life, including fishing and more domestic activities, which bring to mind folk-songs and ballads. But there is also something darker yet simultaneously whimsical in the images of trapping, flooding, graveyards, and crumbling ruins with their portentous Latin inscriptions.

What amazed and amused me most was the almost surreal nature of some of the imagery: a couple on a galloping horse encountering a gargantuan leaf was perhaps the most arresting, along with a monkey staring into a shaving mirror. But the one engraving I’d been really looking forward to was the one in which Bewick had carved a reproduction of his own thumb-print as the main part of the design, and it did not disappoint. Prepared to go hunting for the hidden fingerprint with my trusty magnifying glass I was delighted as it appeared, large as you like, taking up almost the entirety of one of the smaller pieces.

Needless to say with my love of the surreal and the miniature, to say nothing of Natural History and engraving, I’ll no doubt be returning to the subject of Thomas Bewick at a later date. Meanwhile, you might like to visit the webpages of the Bewick Society, and their blog, Tale-Pieces. And I highly recommend a trip to the exhibition to see these engravings for yourself if at all possible.

Thomas Bewick ‘Tale-Pieces’ continues at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham until the 25th May, after which it can be seen at The Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle.

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