Graham Black

After a long career as an art director in London, I realised a long-held ambition to relocate to West Cornwall and rekindle my love affair with printmaking. My studio is now based on a working dairy farm a few miles from Land’s End. To suggest that my work is deeply rooted in West Penwith’s rugged coastal environment seems clichéd, almost trite, but it is this affinity with the local landscape and topography that motivates and underpins much of my work.

I also draw inspiration from the work of the great pioneers of British abstraction who were similarly motivated by the Cornish landscape: Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Terry Frost, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, William Scott and Victor Pasmore, among others. Where my work differs, perhaps, is in representing the myriad textural complexities of the oversized stones, rocks and cliffs that dominate the area. I’m just as interested in the surface patterns and textural aspects as I am in the form and shape.

I work primarily with the sikscreen process in my printmaking, although I occasionally like to explore collagraphs, linocuts and etchings as well. Indeed, my silkscreen process has been influenced by the subtle and nuanced textures which these other print mediums create so well. As digital technology has developed and become ubiquitous, so fine artists, illustrators and graphic designers have once again embraced the sikscreen process, exploiting its potential for unexpected and unpredictable outcomes.