【线上展厅第九期】第六届上海铜版画展——国际美柔汀特展艺术家解读

1982-85 牛津大学彭布罗克学院 拉斯金美术学院 - 美术学士学位

2016 英国西英格兰皇家学院 – 院士

1982-85 Oxford University (Pembroke College) Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art – BFA

2016 Elected RWA Academician

参展与获奖

2019

俄罗斯叶卡捷琳堡第5届国际美柔汀节 / 秉承媒介的传统与技巧奖

英国皇家学院夏季展

2018 

英国伦敦艺术博览会 - Beaux Arts  

英国拉帕达艺术博览会 - Beaux Arts

英国达廷顿霍尔信托集团达廷顿艺术学院驻地艺术家

英国伦敦摩尔美术馆《锐利之眼》受邀艺术家

英国普利茅斯艺术学院凹版画展 - 杰文·霍尔曼策展

2017 

英国西英格兰皇家学院《DRAWN》双年展作品筛选人

英国皇家学院夏季展

2016 

英国皇家学院夏季展

英国德温特艺术奖 /入围

英国卡特赖特城堡美术馆（布拉德福德博物馆经营） 《动物》

2015 

英国皇家学院夏季展

2014 

英国伦敦Beaux Arts《杰作》

英国伦敦艺术博览会 - Beaux Arts  

2013   

英国伦敦Beaux Arts《 树》（ 4人展）

英国皇家艺术学院夏季展

英国达特茅斯Coombe Gallery美术馆 《动物癖》

英国伦敦艺术博览会 - Beaux Arts

2012 

英国皇家艺术学院夏季展受邀艺术家

英国伦敦摩尔美术馆《针线奖》展  

英国西英格兰皇家学院 / 获奖者

英国伦敦Waterhouse & Dodd《原始版画展》

Exhibitions & Awards

2019 

PRIZE for adhering to the traditions and skills of the medium, International Mezzotint Festival V, Yekaterinburg, Russia

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

2018  

London Art Fair, Beaux Arts

LAPADA art Fair, Beaux Arts

Dartington Arts, Dartington Hall Trust -Artist in Residence

Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries London - Invited artist

Plymouth College of Art, Intaglio print exhibition, curated by Jevon Holman

2017   

Selector for DRAWN Biennial RWA

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

2016   

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

Derwent Prize, shortlisted

Cartwright Hall (Bradford Museums) - ANIMAL

2015  

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

2014    

Beaux Arts London MASTER DRAWINGS

London Art Fair, Beaux Arts

2013    

Beaux Arts London TREE, 4 person show

Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition

Coombe Gallery, Dartmouth - ANIMALIA

London Art Fair, Beaux Arts

2012 

Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition, Invited artist

Threadneedle Prize Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London

Prize winner, Royal West of England Academy

Waterhouse & Dodd London - The Original Print Show

我的第一幅美柔汀作品是在三十五年前的美术学校完成的。当时我在牛津的拉斯金美术学院。我在离开牛津大学时获得了一项国际性的绘画奖，之后多年专注绘画，直到大约十年前才回归版画。

我生活并工作在德文郡的乡村，距离大海只有几英里的路程，离达特河和达特穆尔河很近。现在我几乎只做美柔汀，它也被称为“黑色方法”，是十七世纪中期首先出现在德国和英国的一种凹版画， 一种基于明暗色调的版画形式，艺术家的工作在于由暗到明，将自己构思的图案从天鹅绒般均匀的黑色中通过提明而呈现出来。

我使用的两台印刷机都老旧得很了。规格较小的作品用那台Rochat，大一些的放在稍大的Hunter Penrose的“小约翰”上印制。

大部分的创作过程早在我的双手触摸版子以前就在进行了，我不断地画画， 我拍照，数以百计地拍， 那些图像在脑海里进入“蒸馏”，长达数月有时甚至数年， 它们很多流失在这个过程里，有一些却在执着地要求我把它们做出来。美柔汀是如此耗时与苛求精准，几乎不留给你出错的余地，你必须真的非常有把握才行。雕刻印版需要花费数百小时，而最大的风险是失去信心，因此你必须把自己真正交给那副图像，打定主意要去完成它。没有任何其他版画方式可以使高光部分具有如此神奇的柔和，也无法拥有如此之暗的墨黑。

美柔汀是一个充满矛盾的创作过程。它是一种侵蚀艺术，或者说是通过“拿走”来产生“存在”或形状。图像从黑暗中显现出来，对我而言，它雄辩地表达了佛教和道教的无常和不二论观念。今年，我一直专注飞蛾系列的美柔汀创作。把蛾的形象从黑暗中逐渐提炼出来，似乎正是方法与主题的完美匹配。对我来说它颇具深意，这种技法本身所能够做到的，正是即从字面又极为诗意地诠释了飞蛾自始至终的非存在也并非不存在的二者兼备的状态。它在这里又不在这里。另外，因为如同在镜子前工作，从黑暗到光明，没有线条，所以在漫长的制作过程中，很多时候甚至不清楚真是你这位艺术家在“画出”飞蛾来，还是飞蛾这个主体在揭示自己。相较其他方式，在这两种可能性之间存在着的并不止于一出游戏和一场对话，而相较所能述说的，我更为珍视交流。

在过去的两年中，我一直聚焦飞蛾。我们正处于第六次物种大规模灭绝的时代，而昆虫的灭绝速度比起哺乳类更是快达八倍。我似乎觉得，见证它们的脆弱和它们尚未被见识的美丽已经成为一种迫切。

我在工作中寻找诗意的共鸣。制作美柔汀需要放慢速度并全神贯注。我认为需要深切关注人类自身以外的世界，这是一种互惠的实践，一种看到看不见的东西并找到可能在人类中间引起良好反响的方法，以期待我们最后减少伤害。

I did my first mezzotint at art school 35 years ago. I was at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford. When I left Oxford, I won an international painting prize, so focussed on painting for many years, only returning to print about ten years ago.

I live and work in rural Devon, a few miles from the sea and very near the river Dart and Dartmoor. These days I work almost exclusively in mezzotint. Otherwise known as la manière noire, mezzotint is an intaglio print method invented in Germany and England in the mid 17C. It’s a form of tonal engraving in which the artist works from dark to light, pulling the forms of her design out of a uniquely velvety black.  

Both the presses I use are very old - the smaller works are printed on a Rochat press and the larger ones on a larger Hunter Penrose ‘Little John’.

Much of my own process goes on before I even touch the plate. I draw and draw and draw.  I take photographs – hundreds of them. Then images distil in the back of my mind for months and sometimes years.  Many drop away but a few insist on being made.  Mezzotint is so slow and exacting, with very little room for error, that one has to be really sure. Hundreds of hours go into engraving the plate, and the biggest danger is of losing heart, so one has to be really committed to an image, really want it to happen. No other print method gives up quite such magical softness in the highlights, nor such an utter inky darkness.

Mezzotint is a paradoxical process.  It is an art of erosion, or ‘taking away’ in order to create ‘presence’ or form. The image emerges from the dark in a way that, for me, speaks eloquently of Buddhist and Taoist ideas of impermanence and non-duality.  This year I have been working exclusively on a series of mezzotints of moths. The gradual drawing forth of the moth from the darkness seems a perfect matching of method to subject.  The method itself holds meaning for me somewhere around its ability to speak both literally and poetically about the moths being neither present, nor absent but always both.  Here and not here.  Also, because one is working in mirror and from dark to light and without line, there are, in the long hours of making, many when it is not at all clear whether one – the artist - is indeed ‘drawing forth’ or whether the moth – subject – is revealing herself.  There is much more of a play, a conversation between these two possibilities than in some other mediums and I value that exchange more than I can say.

For the last two years I have focussed on moths. We are in the sixth mass extinction and insects are going extinct 8 times faster than mammals.  It feels to me that there is an urgency of witnessing their fragility and un-seen beauty.

I am looking for a poetic resonance in my work.  To make mezzotints one must slow right down and pay attention. I see paying deep attention to the world beyond our own skins – the more-than-human world – as a practice of reciprocity, a way of seeing the unseen and finding what answering grace that may provoke in us humans, in the hope that ultimately we might do less harm.

标题/ Title：《花园虎纹蛾》/ Garden Tiger Moth

技法/Techniques：美柔汀/ Mezzotint

规格/ Dimension (CM)：30 x 30

创作年代/Creation YEAR：2019

标题/ Title：《普通贵格会教徒蛾》/ Common Quaker Moth

技法/Techniques：美柔汀/ Mezzotint

规格/ Dimension (CM)：30 x 30

创作年代/Creation YEAR：2019

标题/ Title：《燕尾蛾》/ Swallow-tailed Moth

技法/Techniques：美柔汀/ Mezzotint

规格/ Dimension (CM)：51 x 51

创作年代/Creation YEAR：2019

标题/ Title：《白羽蛾》/ White Plume Moth

技法/Techniques：美柔汀/ Mezzotint

规格/ Dimension (CM)：30 x 30

创作年代/Creation YEAR：2019

标题/ Title：《希伯来字符蛾》/ Hebrew Character Moth

技法/Techniques：美柔汀/ Mezzotint

规格/ Dimension (CM)：41 x 41

创作年代/Creation YEAR：2019

标题/ Title：《夏末》/ End of the Summer

技法/Techniques：美柔汀/ Mezzotint

规格/ Dimension (CM)：20 x20

创作年代/Creation YEAR：2018

上海美术家协会会员

上海版画艺委会会员

Member of Shanghai Artists Association 

Member of the Shanghai Print Art Committee

参展与获奖

2018 

中国第7届上海市民大展 / 一等奖

2017 

中国上海第九届美术大展中 / 白玉兰佳作奖

中国第22届全国版画展

中国上海版画年度精选作品展

中国第19届江南之春 / 二等奖

2016 

中国中日青年版画家联展

中国庆祝建党95周年、纪念长征胜利80周年上海美术作品展

中国上海版画年度精选作品展

中国上海半岛美术馆中青年版画提名展

Exhibitions & Awards

2018

First Prize, the 7th Shanghai Citizen Art Exhibition

2017

Magnolia Award, the 9th Shanghai Art Exhibition

The 22nd National Printmaking Exhibition

Selected Print Works Annual Exhibition, Shanghai, China

Second Prize，the 19th Spring in Jiangnan Exhibition

2016

Chinese and Japanese Young Printmakers’ Group Exhibition

Shanghai Art Exhibition in celebration of the 95th anniversary of the CCP founding and the 80th anniversary of the Long March Victory

Selected Print Works Annual Exhibition, Shanghai, China

Young and Middle-aged Printmakers’ Nomination Exhibition, Shanghai Peninsula Art Gallery

作品《亭亭净植》，取义北宋学者周敦颐作品《爱莲说》中“出淤泥而不染，濯清涟而不妖，中通外直，不蔓不枝；香远益清，亭亭净植；可远观而不可亵玩焉”。

莲花， 是古往今来文人画家笔下高歌咏叹的对象 ，出于对莲花的喜爱，近年来创作的版画作品多以莲为题材，有用木刻，丝网，铜板来表现的。

《亭亭净植》这幅作品采用铜板美柔汀绘画进行了构思创作，似乎觉得只有通过美柔汀的表现手法才得以走入寂静、通达、古远的意境，画中引入千纸鹤，和宋元山水元素，有追古思今以及期愿当下美好生活的情感寄托。

The idea of my work "Plant of Grace" came from the Northern Song Dynasty scholar Zhou Dunyi's Ode to the Lotus Flower: “How stainless it rises from its slimy bed! How modestly it reposes on the clear pool. An emblem of purity and truth, symmetrically perfect, its subtle perfume is wafted far and wide while there it rests in spotless state. Something to be regarded reverently from a distance, and not be profaned by familiar approach…”

The lotus flower is an object of chanting in the writings of literati and painters throughout the ages. Because of the same love, most of the prints I have created in recent years are based on this particular theme through different techniques of woodcut, screen-print and metal plate.

“Plant of Grace” is a work conceived with mezzotint technique instead. It seems that only through the way of mezzotint can we accede to such quiet, conscious and remote artistic conception. I have introduced in the work also the image of paper cranes and the elements of landscape painting of Song Dynasty and Yuan Dynasty, which may generate emotional support for whom thinking about the past and present and wishing for a better life nowadays.

标题/Title：《亭亭净植》/ Plant of Grace

技法/Techniques：美柔汀/ mezzotint

规格/ Dimension (CM)：30x40

创作年代/Creation YEAR：2020

特别鸣谢活动赞助单位：康颂中国

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