PERCY’S ADVENTURES IN PRINTMAKING
Date Posted: 25th June 2024
A lot has happened since my last posting: the Kelly exhibition and Words by the Water both at Theatre by the Lake and both enjoyable. The big surprise for me was the bumper sale of Kelly’s original prints particularly the etchings at the exhibition. Apparently etchings are the new best thing.
There is much confusion and controversy about prints in the art world so I’d like to clarify a few things. Many pictures are sold as prints but are basically a commercial printing of an existing painting. They are nice to have but will not increase in value and detract from the value of the original painting. Even if they are signed and editioned as in 150/200 they have no more worth than a postcard or greetings card.
When you buy an Original print, it is an original in itself. It was conceived by the artist as a print. And it is a work of art.
Kelly started with simple one-off lino prints and scraperboard Christmas cards like many of us have done at school (I don’t think he did potato prints!) but it wasn’t until he went to a printmaking exhibition at the Settlement in Maryport in the 50s that he realized his work would translate into that medium and he wanted to learn how to do it. From childhood painting and drawing came naturally to him but printmaking is a different and complex process that needs to be learned ... and it requires big equipment mainly a press and space. He tried to find an evening class aided by his poet friend Norman Nicholson but there weren’t any at all in Cumberland - only a 4 year course at the art college was available.
There he learned to make etching plates which were used to make the etchings sold at the recent exhibition. He also learned the silkscreen process and lithography. There were examples of each in the theatre exhibition and now in work for sale on the website. But Kelly hated repetition. It bored him to make 75 of anything identical. The challenge and skill was in the making of the plate. He would do a few “pulls” adding variations as he went along and move on to the next idea.
I well remember when the college technician came to the gallery to take his printing press away for students to use. They loaded it in the van and drove off leaving a heavy wooden box on the floor of the washhouse in the yard. When I tried to pick it up it collapsed and revealed 45 etching plates. I rang an old friend in Edinburgh, Robert Adam, a master printer who drove down straight away and was very emotional seeing the quality of those plates. “This is not student work” he said as he left in a jubilant mood with a boot full of rusty plates. He came back a few weeks later with a “pull” of each now clean and shiny plates and with Brian Kelly’s permission agreed to make an edition of 75 from 10 of them. Some of these are now sold out as they have reached the 75 +10% APs* limit but some still have some capacity left and are on the web site under WORKS FOR SALE and then prints. (the ones that have reached 75 are marked sold. There will never be any more.) The plate cannot be used ever again. Hit the cross in the middle of the image for details. (* AP means Artists Proof and is usually the first few perfect prints before signing the edition) The editions that still have capacity can be ordered.
Artists from mediaeval times have employed a trained engineer to do the heavy and exacting work of printing from the artist’s plates. Kelly would never have done this even if he had the means. He wanted to play around with colour on his screenprints and his lithographs. He just couldn’t help changing things. We do not have the fabric screens used in screenprints, nor the “stone” used in lithography made by the man himself so all of those were printed by Kelly. A popular litho at the exhibition was Fell Patterns which quickly sold. When the exhibition ended I browsed through my print drawer and found a few more that Percy had printed – each one unique. They are now on the website and available to purchase. Just drop me an email through the enquiry box. I’ve also added a watercolour painting of the Iron Light in Maryport to works for sale.
- For anyone interested I am giving an illustrated talk “PURSUING PERCY” at Skiddaw U3A on 17th July 10.30 in Threlkeld Village Hall (£1.50 for non members). I will show the painting that changed my life and my long search for a postman called Percy Kelly who was a formidable artist who did not want to sell any of his work, had given up the postal job and run away to Kendal with a surgeon’s wife, then to St Davids’ and then to Norfolk - oh and by the way he’d changed his name to Roberta Penelope! No wonder it took me so long to find him! It was even harder to get the work back to Cumberland – all will be revealed on the 17th.