Controlled Imperfections: A retrospective by Simon Hodgkinson

About

"Artist Statement : One day under Thierry Cauwett’s tutelage in Paris I discovered monoprinting and was smitten. I loved the spontaneity, the in-exactitude. I am not a patient person whether cooking or painting. I once did an etching residency in Venice. Beautiful place, frustrating experience – all too precise. I cook Ottolenghi dishes – I hear people say they are too complex, but I only follow the spirit not the letter.

It is not that I am lazy but that I am impulsive. I am happier getting something wrong five times and right the sixth, rather than slaving over it. With mono-printing I can work quickly, and differently. Patience is not a virtue here, rather impulse is.  I love the accidental imperfections. The mark-making is quite different and impossible to make by simply applying a brush or palette knife directly. The unintended accidents that occur create the magic.  My artist friend Harry, asked me how I made a particular mark on a painting. It was, I said, a simple brushstroke like the ones he makes all the time, but monoprinted creating imperfections. I’ve learnt to create that effect – I control the accident.

The process involves transmitting images onto a second surface. I apply paint to a substrate - acrylics for smaller prints,  oils for larger pieces (up to 2mx2m) – it gives me more time to work before it dries. I work fast (the paint must be wet when I make the print), I draw and make marks with a wide variety of objects (rubbers, brushes, palette knives, fingers), trying always to understand how the final print will look, yet I am always surprised.

The majority of my works never see the light of day. I look at the piece time and again. If I like it immediately, I will often grow tired of it. If I don’t at first I may come back and grow to do so. Sometimes I will only like half of it and recompose to make that part the whole.  Beauty is not the goal. Often my pieces are dark, monochromatic, but I believe speak an emotional truth that colour cannot express. My subject matter is often socially or environmentally engaged.

The works are split into two periods. Free unthinking colourful collages made in Paris in 2012 when I started painting again as a release from my divorce after 30 years of career and family. Those made here over the last three years after I had been deconstructed by Central Saint Martins school (equally traumatic) where I studied and became constrained, concerned for the thematic constancy I was told to achieve. People often ask why I don’t go back to my collage days (pun intended). It’s not possible.