Yesterday morning Shane Jones and I made a flying
visit to Castlemaine to deliver my four Inking
Up linocuts to Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum.
We got into town a little earlier than
expected, so had time for a coffee at Saffs Café. The notice board just
inside the front door (pictured below) immediately caught my eye, initially because it reminded me of Shane's quodlibet paintings. The sharp-eyed will notice two Inking Up handbills, one (right hand,
top) featuring a linocut by Rona Green, the other (roughly centre) featuring my
linocut Corporeal/Ethereal. Students from the local secondary school made the posters as
work experience exercises - they did a brilliant job. Another striking example of their work is reproduced at the top of this page.
From the café we drove to Castlemaine Art
Gallery. I’ve always loved its elegant Art Deco facade; set against yesterday
morning’s clear blue sky, it looked particularly fine.
The work safely delivered, we headed for Melbourne, where I began hand colouring the first prints in the edition of Ideopsis gaura (Dainty paperwing) Woman (see previous blog post, Saturday, 22 August). Later this morning
I’ll be taking number 1/36 to photographer Tim Gresham for documentation.
For someone so determined to cut back on printmaking, these days I seem to be doing little else but. Clearly it’s going to be a long goodbye.