‘The Middle of Nowhere / The Centre of the Universe’, an exhibition of new colour lino-cuts by Mike O’Connor at the Courthouse Gallery

12th June - 9th July 2015
‘The Middle of Nowhere / The Centre of the Universe’, an exhibition of new colour lino-cuts by Mike O’Connor [with some photographs and collages],
The Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon, County Clare.
Official opening on 12th June at 8 pm.

Mike O’Connor has been making prints in North Clare for over thirty years, mostly landscape images. This show is called ‘The Middle of Nowhere / The Centre of the Universe’. “It seemed to me that they are one and the same. The notion celebrates the growing excitement to be met in the everyday, in farmland, weather, roads – everything”, says Mike. “I grew up with printing, my father being an engraver and Art-School principal. Although I have a particular fondness for the simple print in black on white paper, I work with colours printed with multiple blocks. This opens out the process to a huge variation of options, images large and small, bright and sombre. More variation comes from the techniques used, some blocks being cut boldly and printed roughly, others cut slowly with detail in fine lines or a scratching method. My images come from the things and places I see every day. To transmit the excitement from the eye, through the head onto paper is the task. With printmaking, this process is less direct, as a block has to be cut [and maybe one or two more for a richer image], then inked and printed in successive layers onto paper. The process of getting this as one wants is called proofing. The work is printed on an iron Albion press made in 1831, though an extra large print has to be pressed by hand with rollers”.

About Printmaking:
There is no original that is copied. The print, once cut, proofed and printed, is the original. Made by the artist from the first idea to the finished work. This is the essential difference between a printmaker’s print and a reproduction, which is merely a photograph of an artwork [made in any medium or size] industrially printed - as for a magazine or poster. Because a print is a multiple, unlike a drawing or a painting, there are more than one. The printmaker limits the number produced in an edition [this might be between 5 and 100]. This means that they are less expensive to buy, and can go home with more than one person, while remaining an original artwork. As a seminal printmaker, Eric Gill, declared some 80 years ago, these are things, not pictures of things.

Top image: Battle of the Hedgerow, by Mike O'Connor.