False Unicorn

I've been working on ideas for a print for a portfolio exchange, organised by Guen Montgomery and Emmy Lingscheit (both studying at the University of Tennessee) titled Unicorn. 

But it feels as if I've been going around in circles and getting nowhere fast, and I'm unhappy with anything I've made so far . . . . . not a good place to be.

 Drawing and re-drawing, printing and re-printing arrrrgh . . . .

However, yesterday I popped up to the V&A to see the Birgit Skiold exhibition 

Zen and the arts of print: Birgit Skiold and Japan. 

http://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/index.html

http://www.birgitskiold.com/

The exhibition doesn't give us a lot, but what it does show is very telling of her work, which is so beautifully pared back. She was a pioneer, both in furthering the status of printmaking as art and for the experimentalism of her work and (more importantly for me) her use of blind embossing mixed with other techniques. 

   

Over the past couple of years I've experimented more with blind embossing and de-bossing, and using it with other techniques at the same time, so it's useful to see examples where other artists have tried this too. 

And it prompted me to return to some ideas I'd started this print with.

So! back to the drawing board - or in this case the lino block.