Poppyland

Degas, monotypes and memories of a garden filled with poppies

I spotted these sumptuous poppies opposite the local library in Eye. My books were placed on the pavement while I gazed.

A warm welcome to new subscribers and returning visitors, it is lovely to have you here. One of the unforeseen consequences of writing my fortnightly Substack is that it has encouraged me to explore new avenues, face up to things I have been avoiding and quite simply get on with it. This week I have been experimenting with the addictive method of monoprinting and have picked up oil paints for the first time in years.

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For the past two weeks, I have been hiding in my “batcave” studio, experimenting with a new way of printmaking.

In his late fifties the artist Degas discovered a new pursuit. His subject shifted from Parisian life, of ballet and the stage, to the landscape of Burgundy. He didn’t sit out with his easel and paint en plein air, as his contemporary Impressionists had done, but instead created his “imaginary landscapes” from fleeting glimpses of journeys made in a horse and carriage while travelling to stay with his friend the artist, Georges Jeanniot.

Jeanniot describes Degas’s delight at discovering that he had a fully equipped print studio at his disposal and no sooner had he arrived than he began creating an innovative sequence of monotypes.

With his strong but beautifully-shaped fingers, his hand grasped the objects, the tools of his genius, handling them with a strange skill and little by little one could see emerging on the metal surface a small valley, a sky, white houses, fruit trees with black branches, birches and oaks, ruts full of water after the recent downpour, orangey clouds dispersing in an animated sky, above the red and green earth.

Landscape, Edgar Degas, 1892 Monotype with soft pastel, 24.5 x 34cm

A monotype, as its name suggests, is a single print pulled from a plate, though a second is possible which picks up the paint remains, and is called a “ghost” print. Degas used sheets of copper and painted in oils on their surface, smoothing damp paper on the top, and sliding it through a press. The process is unpredictable and yields unexpected results: the paint can blob, pool or repel. It combines the spontaneity of gestural drawing with the technology and craft of printmaking.

Degas pushed the paint around on the plate with pieces of rag and his fingers to mould the shape of hills and clifftops. Never a purist, and always keen to push the boundaries of his medium, he added soft pastel to the print to create a diaphanous additional layer to the surface, giving glimpses of the paint beneath. Within these landscapes it is possible to see traces of his fingerprints captured in the paint, a ghost of the artist’s hand, giving us a touching human connection to these late works.

Why not, you might ask, simply paint in oils and then add pastel if required, instead of this uncertain process? Degas loved the lack of control and he wanted to record his perception of landscape and not be enslaved to the view. The process needs to be completed quickly, before the paint dries, and this challenges the artist to distil their vision quickly and without relying on detail.

It was partly this aspect that drew me to the process. Looking back at my photographs of my Norwich garden , particularly at the opium poppies that grew in abundance, I wanted to capture the memory of those glaucous pepperpot seed heads and the glowing red blooms. The other draw to this technique is that the images produced are indistinct, and slightly abstracted, conveying a sense of looking back through the haze of memory.

Photographs of the opium poppies in my garden in Norwich

I began using more contemporary materials than Degas, a gelli plate and acrylics, as this would allow me to work quickly, and on a small scale, without the added necessity of a press. The capricious nature of the process makes it addictive: each time you learn how to apply the paint, how not to be absorbed with detail and how different brands alter the outcome. So you try again, and again.

A monotype made with acrylics and using a gelli plate

I found adding retarder extended the drying time in the extreme heat and I discovered soft grip brushes that were gentler on my hands. In researching this I discovered that there was also a practical reason that Degas focused on monotypes in later life, his vision was affected by photophobia, a sensitivity to bright light, and so the comfortable, stable light of the studio would have been preferable to working outdoors.

A further, happy discovery in experimenting with monotypes is that the speed in which you have to work makes you less precious about the outcome and even better it stops that niggling inner critic from intervening over your shoulder - you simply don’t have time to listen!

To see a wall slowly covered with your work, is so heartening. There are some that you peel back and they give you just what you hoped, then there are others that only partially printed, but that is what makes you want to keep going, waiting for another happy accident.

Some of the monotypes made using a gelli plate and acrylics

Having played around with the gelli plate, I remembered I had some acetate sheet that I had intended for engraving, but had never been used. I decided it was time to follow Degas’ footsteps further and use oil paint and my etching press.

A monotype painted using oil paint on an acrylic sheet that was then passed through the press

I can’t tell you how much I have enjoyed this. Going in my studio to make these monotypes each day has been joyful and liberating. I have avoided returning to oils for years: partly because I felt fearful of returning to the past and partly, that having got there, I feared I wouldn’t to be to use them anymore. And so I have been dancing around with other materials, but nothing compares to their versatility and depth of colour, and prizing the lids from my old tubes has felt like meeting treasured friends.

A dear friend is always telling me “nothing compares to the power of doing”. Taking that leap felt huge, but having done it, it wasn’t at all. I want to move on to landscapes in this medium too, but in the meantime I shall keep exploring the garden. I have a piece of copper that is calling me from the studio.

For those interested in the practical aspects, I find Royal Talens and Basic Liquitex acrylic paint works well, and although Golden has much stronger pigment, it needs to be mixed with Matte Medium otherwise it seems to not adhere to the surface. Also, your brushes need to be dry between cleaning them in water, as this stops the paint from sticking. I should also mention that the print produces a mirror image of your painting, but I think this adds to the excitement. It is a process manageable on the kitchen table, you can use a piece of acetate, instead of a gelli plate, and smooth the print with your hand. The same can be achieved with oils, though pulling it through a press lifts more paint, and you need to use slightly damp, thicker paper. Although this is very new to me, if you have any other questions, just drop me a line in the comments and I will do my best to help.

Something to listen to

“On Mardle Fen” by Nick Warburton

I am hoping someone on here will share my devotion to this wonderful radio series, but I suspect my adoration might be rather niche. I love the intimacy of radio drama and the way in which your imagination is allowed to create and inhabit another world, and this is my very favourite. Set in the backwaters of the Cambridgeshire Fens, it tells the story of Warwick Hedges, beautifully played by Trevor Peacock, and his unique restaurant. It combines family tensions, a love of food and is infused with the strange, magical folklore of the fens. Let me know what you think!

You can listen to it on the Internet Archive here.

“Curious Under the Stars”- Meic Povey

Similar in flavour to the above, I have been gobbling up all 11 series on my afternoons in the studio and confess to feeling quite bereft that it is over. The setting is the mythical village of Glan Don, on the Welsh coast and it is the charming tale of Diane and Gareth who returns to his childhood home to reopen a derelict pub, The Druid’s Rest. Tales from the Mobinogion are woven into the struggles of community life. Sweet, poignant and absorbing, all series are currently available on BBC Sounds for you to feast on.

I didn’t think I liked fantasy fiction, though I loved the work of Susan Cooper and Alan Garner as a child. If anyone could recommend comparable adult fiction, or indeed other radio dramas, please drop me a line!

Something to read

You can read more of these late works in Edgar Degas: the last landscapes, London: Merrell, 2006 by Ann Dumas, Richard Kendall, Flemming Friborg, Line Clausen Federsen

Something to watch

This short film shows the process of Degas’ monotypes much better than I can. It also shows his earlier monotypes using black ink of dancers, which are extraordinary.

Thank you for your company and for your support, it means a great deal. In two weeks I will be away in Pembrokeshire, so my next post will be a little later, but I do hope you will join me then. If you liked this post, please press “the heart” as it helps my work be seen and please consider subscribing, it is always very cheering to make new connections here.

Monotype made with oil paint on an acetate sheet and pulled through my press