BILL PRYDE: ARTIST INTERVIEW

3 - 30th September 2015, Curwen Gallery, 34 Windmill Street, London, WIT 2JR
Artist Talk 22nd September 7pm in the Upper Gallery.

Bill Pryde is one of the UKs most esteemed screenprinters. His new body of work continues to build upon ideas he began in his 2012 solo show Lonely Churches, Remembered Landscapes with cloisonné interpretations of scenery in Scotland and Suffolk. This element of his work is joined by a new collection of Orchid prints, a return to a subject which Bill first explored over ten years ago.

Robin Spalding and Natalie Suggitt joined Bill in his newly developed studio to discuss the new work…

Curwen Gallery: What have you been trying to achieve with this new body of work?

Bill Pryde: Making work, the physical act of printmaking, gives me the opportunity of creating immediate and particular responses to the world I see around me, when I wake up each morning.  (All this because I wish to be seeing, I think the poet said). I enjoy this.

And this excitement, this energy I suppose, is what inspires me to make the work itself. It is, of course, an expression of my own mood and feelings… and now that I have moved my studio to Suffolk full time, I find myself surrounded daily by the enormous and ever-changing skies and landscape moods of this county, and facing the constant mystery of the sea,  which is not always active, but often quiet, dark, even contemplative, and holding all sorts of secrets and currents underneath. And the marshes, that stretch out towards the sky.

Suffolk, and my native Scotland (which Suffolk reminds me of… the coast east of Edinburgh… same light, similar vegetation etc), demands a response; they are huge and defiant canvases, moody, tranquil yet full of force.

I wanted to explore new, more painterly techniques in my recent monoprints (these mean I only get to do things once, which I find very freeing; if it works an idea can be further developed, sometimes spoilt of course! But, as in painting, there can be a similar spontaneity in monoprinting; things can be covered over, over-printed, though unlike painting, not removed to start again.

I also wanted to produce some strong and dynamic work that had a spring in its step, and asked to be looked at. Recently my attention was drawn to the £5 orchids at my local Tesco, with their delicate, old and spindly stalks, suddenly producing an outrageous and youthful flurry of flowers … and I thought, “I’d like to make that”.

I have my own aches and pains (I’ve just celebrated my 64th birthday) and keep pushing myself... so perhaps in this way the Orchids are a touch autobiographical… but isn’t everything really??

Bill Pryde, Landscape I

Monoprint, 60 x 63cm, £400

Curwen Gallery: You generally only produce small editions and monoprints, and because your prints are often unique I feel like much of your work is closer, in terms of material significance, to painting than printmaking. Why is it that you mostly produce single prints?

BP: Hand producing large editions of work can be very punishing…. and I’ve found you can never get the size of edition right! If you make 20 of something, the odds are that you’ll only sell three and they’ll end up in the back of a drawer… And it’s always good to have people wanting more. I’ve found that if you put a big editioned piece into the RA (where I’ve always sold out) it won’t get in…Sod’s law really….

It’s the immediacy of the process  and technique at one remove that attracts me to printmaking, the rules and disciplines, there to be understood, and sometimes broken. There is a great satisfaction in creating colour and contrasts that have a real temperature. It is only ink on paper after all… but an image can have its own clarity and definition, its own edge and shape.

I applaud the democracy of the reproductive qualities of printmaking, but for now I like the idea of a one-off, individual moment, captured there and then… and finding a good home of its own (On a wall near you).

Curwen Gallery: How do you feel that this new body of work has moved on since your last show, Suffolk Churches…?

BP: My last Curwen show was themed. You asked me to do a new show so I gave myself a project and then documented it. Also it was for the smaller upper gallery and I wanted the work to work well in the space.

I am lucky enough to have done a fair bit of travelling, and like many travellers am always drawn to local churches, especialky the lonely ones, all on their own in the middle of nowhere. Scotland, Suffolk, Iceland, Lanzarote… four of my favourite haunts. So draw and then print. The prints were quite detailed, small scale but complicated, very precise. The new work is much freer, perhaps more ambitious.

Curwen Gallery: You’ve said before that you take a lot of inspiration from the Scottish colourists. What parts of your work do you feel continue their ideas?

BP: Coming from Edinburgh I was aware of the Scottish Colourist tradition from quite a young age, though mainly through reproductions I might add! The Colourists were a confident group of associated artists, who got themselves away from the grey mornings of Edinburgh city life and were dazzled by the dynamic and enthusiastic reach of colour and harmonies that they saw, mainly in France, growing out of Fauvism. We Scots like colour in our homes, insist on it, I think. It can be dreich outside… and cold. These painters and printmakers, and many other  of their ilk, bring excitement and energy into more set situations… decorative, often domestic - pleasing, joyful…. anything wrong with that?

Curwen Gallery: How do you feel that continuing their motivations in screenprinting rather than painting has changed the way that the work is understood? Do you feel that you move with the tradition and how do you update their ideas for a contemporary audience?

BP: There are some fantastic Scottish printmakers, very contemporary and dynamic, making work in Glasgow and Edinburgh and particularly I think in Dundee, currently. Yes, this is part of a tradition. Scots like tradition, and history, though it might not be fashionable to say so in England.

I think that printmaking by definition has to be aware of its own international tradition. We have great examples of 20^th Century printmaking everywhere, Germany in the first half of the last century, America in the second half.  I’ve been lucky enough to work in Indi and see how screenprinting is only now finding an artistic credibility there, in the face of digital work too.

The language of printmaking has many individual accents, but perhaps one tongue.

Curwen Gallery: You mentioned that you are thinking of opening your new studio as a teaching establishment- what were your plans for this?

BP: As I’ve mentioned, printmaking is by definition a very democratic and collaborative art form… Equipment is often shared and you can be inspired and challenged by other people making work around you… It can help you raise your game. Printmakers muck in, but there are rules to be learnt, and techniques and shortcuts to find out about too. I think printmakers are generous with their knowledge. It could be very satisfying, and instructive for me to be able to introduce other artists to screenprinting, and see where they can take it. The idea of teaching short courses allows me to encourage people to make something of their own, with a bit of technical help perhaps… but their own choices, their own ambitions.  To make something of their own, they might take themselves by surprise. This could be fun I hope…

Curwen Gallery: How did your time studying for your MA at Camberwell change how you thought about and produced your work?

BP: I studied at Byam Shaw – small, intimate, encouraging. Then my MA at Camberwell - large, challenging, competitive in the best sense. I learnt techniques from the staff, was able to make work quickly, and learn, gaining knowledge from my younger fellow students, but gaining the confidence to follow my own instincts, and learn to be confident enough to have ambitions.

Curwen Gallery: What has been your career trajectory? Which exhibitions and opportunities do you think have particularly helped you?

BP: After thirty years work in theatre and television as a director, where my job was to get the best out of other people, my job now is to get the best out of myself. Making my own work for the first time, being only answerable to myself is very freeing. Of course it takes a bit of nerve. But I suppose I am just happy to have the opportunity to make the work, to express what I feel about things… and without words, that’s quite freeing!

As a result of my Graduate show at Camberwell I was asked to show work by three galleries afterwards, including the Curwen with your own Graduate Show. (Long may its tradition continue). This has been followed by I think four or five solo shows with the Curwen, and in the past I have done well at the RA Summer Shows, though have recently not put work in for consideration. Immediately after college I joined East London Printmakers and had five or so very happy years there, with many group shows, before setting up a first studio of my own.

Other showing highlights have been in Edinburgh (at the Dundas St Gallery, and more recently at Bonhams), in Kolkatta, at the Nehru Centre in London, in Aldeburgh and in Saxmundham, Suffolk.

Curwen Gallery: Which artists would you consider to be your main inspirations?

BP: All artists inspire me, and musicians, and film makers… and gardeners! I feel Scottish and British… but the English landscape tradition in printmaking is particularly strong. In the last century…Piper, the Nashes, Ravillious, Bawden…also Hockney, Caulfield, Bert Irwin, and then across the water we’ve got Warhol, and the West and East Coast American artists from Ellsworth Kelly to Milton Avery… Big minds, big countryside!

There’s so much wonderful work out there. I’m grateful I was able to discover it all when I was 50 (I was too busy doing words before). This has been like learning a new language, and hearing voices I’d never noticed before.

Curwen Gallery: What is it about the Suffolk/ Scottish landscape which particularly captures your imagination?

BP: The landscape speaks and sings. The author, the artist, the composer observes and attempts to capture a moment.

Curwen Gallery: We are particularly keen on your new still life works. How do you feel that you make this old painterly tradition relevant to a contemporary audience?

BP: Still Life… well the  name says it all. It’s Still… Life… I don’t attempt to represent anything, rather I hope to respond to it… its shape, its form… an object is a landscape, as much as a landscape can be seen as an object.

Look .See. Respond. Draw. Make. Enjoy. What more can I say..!!?

Bill Pryde, Orchid Duo - Turqouise

Monoprint, 74 x 58cm £500

Bill Pryde's Landscapes and Orchids is currently showing in Curwen's upper gallery till 30th September 2015, open Mon-Fri 10am-6pm (Thursday 10am-8pm) and on Saturdays from 11am-5pm. You can view some of Bill's work at the Curwen Gallery website by following this link. 

There is an Artist Talk on Tuesday 22nd September at 7pm in the exhibition space, where Bill will be speaking about his work and answering questions. We hope to see you there!