Two reasons for showing this charcoal drawing. The first is that I’m going through the archive preparing a list of works that I’m hoping to borrow for my retrospective next year, and this drawing is on it. The second reason is that the drawing was a commission for the cover of The Old Stile Press Press in the twentieth century: a biography 1979-1999, and I’m presently preparing a cover… this time a painting… for a second Old Stile Press bibliography that’s to pick up the story from 1999 onwards.
The drawing was a fanciful evocation of Catchmays Court in the Wye Valley, where Nicolas and Frances McDowall live and produce their beautiful books. The image was composed so that when wrapped around the cover the single black sheep would appear on the spine. For the new book Nicolas has requested that Catchmays Court appear again, though this time in a painting because the cover is to be in colour. He’s also asked for the black sheep to make a reappearance, and moreover he suggested that she should gain a friend so that two sheep will decorate the spine of the second volume. This painting is presently nearing completion, but I shan’t show it on the Artlog until the book has been published.
A solitary black sheep in a landscape was a part of my iconography for a while, appearing in an illustration for Catriona Urquhart’s volume of poems The Mare’s Tale, published in 2001 by The Old Stile Press.
After that the idea was developed in further drawings…
… and also became a series of monoprint/collages titled The Journey of the Sheep.
I hadn’t expected to be returning to the ‘black sheep’ series, and indeed probably wouldn’t have done so now but for the unexpected request from the McDowalls. After all, it’s been ten years since the last cover. But I must say I’m rather enjoying the project, and before too long I’ll be able to show you how that black sheep is looking these days.
Once again I’m finding you drawn to spiritual iconography, whether you mean to or no! I like these; your small, alert animals always have charm, and the great raveled wildernesses are grand places to be lost. I also like the monoprints with those claw-like trees dominating the little sheep, looking out at us from a spot of mystery.
I wish I could find an image of the one I liked best of all, the result of an accident of offset printing. A tiny cut-out paper shape had become stuck without my noticing to the printing roller before I inked it up lightly. (When making collage combined with printing, my work table often becomes hopelessly messy!) I then applied the roller directly to a sheet of prepared paper to add some tone. The fragment transferred itself to the paper where it sat all unnoticed while I continued to make an image, layering in trees, clouds, a moon and some crumbling ruins. When I finally noticed something slightly raised on the surface of the work, I gently peeled it away with a scalpel blade to find that a paper sheep, discarded from an earlier image, had protected the clean paper underneath it, leaving its’ pristine outline against the surrounding darkness. The work had finished itself without any help from me, and I titled it The Ghost of a Sheep.
That’s a great little story. The sheep that was lost is found! And a good title.
Can’t even begin to tell you how much I love these, Clive! It’s the fanciful, almost stylized vegetation that gets me. Marvelous.
Glad that you like them Beth. I love drawing, and charcoal is such an expressive material to work with. There were some really interesting images in the monoprint/collage series, but I haven’t been able to find them.
clive, these have such a wonderful play of light and shadow, and i absolutely love the entire range of tree-styles…in the first one, the way they change as they go back, and i also love the really broad version in the middle. and what a cool idea, to have the lone sheep on the spine! these are fantastic, you should add them to your website!
can’t wait to see the new version…
Zoe, you’re a sweetie. It’s summer and I guess people are away from their computers, busy with many other things. But you’re such a loyal commentator on the Artlog, always finding something positive to say, and I’m greatly obliged to you for that.
I’ve always been quite careful not to overload the website with too many images, otherwise it might become complicated to navigate. That’s why I’m posting things on the Artlog that haven’t been seen previously online.
that does make sense, to not overload the site…and the artlog serves perfectly, then, as a complement to it…
i so look forward to your posts–thank you for the wealth of beauty you share!