Print Club News / 16th July 2025
Editions #31 & 32
Corona / WIP / EPC
I hope this finds you well and enjoying the summer. We’ve just had a good downpour here, which seems both long overdue and very welcome. The garden is moving through its high summer phase, all bold colour and drama, with plants and flowers coming and going, setting seed and dying back day by day. The sweet peas are perfect at the moment and particularly redolent of summer to my mind. I’ve been buying my Sweet Pea seeds from Eagle seeds in recent years, the varieties they sell have particularly long stems which makes them great for cutting for a vase. If you grow peas, I’d recommend giving them a try.
Eagle seeds > https://www.eaglesweetpeas.co.uk/
I’ve been meaning to get in touch for a couple of weeks now, to let you know about the next two Print Club editions, which should be completed in the next couple of weeks. I’m working on a summer double edition full of colour and heat! I hope at least one of these two new pieces will appeal to you, maybe both even…
The latest one is a new drawing titled Corona, that involves five circular points of energy and interest offset on a diagonal line. Each point serves as a locus for differing amounts of radial or radiating energy. It’s the first study for a new series of works that I hope capture some of the high summer sunshine and energy we’re getting here at the moment.
Working with less symmetry and a reduced colour palette is something I’ve been continuing to try out. Using a more asymmetric approach to the geometry allows for a more directional flow of energy moving through the linework; although there is a risk that the geometry becomes too arbitrary in its layout, in the absence of a stricter more symmetrical underpinning. It’s a tautology that I will continue to try and resolve.
I like the idea of creating more impact by reducing the palette too, using fewer colours across the picture plane sets up a more rhythmic interplay between the different areas of the image. I hope it adds a certain extra focus and energy to the final work. Certainly that is the intention.
It’s fair to say that the piece takes some inspiration from Sonia Delaunay’s work, and also that of Cyril Power, who often managed to combine real energy with beautifully dynamic mark making in his work, in ways that bring a kind of Vorticist inflection to his studies from the 1930s and 40s.
If you’re not familiar with his work, he’s listed on Google here > https://www.google.com/search?q=cyril+power
I’ve been looking at Delaunay’s work all my adult life, but had the opportunity to see some really fabulous larger examples in the flesh at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris a few weeks ago, stopping off on the way back from an early Summer break visiting Southern Spain with my family. The ambitious scale of the paintings was both inspirational and something of a surprise.
I’ll write a little more about some of the galleries and artworks I saw in Spain later in the summer, but for now I’ll leave you with these photos of Sonia Delaunay's work at the Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris.
I’ll be in touch again soon to let you know when I’ve completed and dispatched the new editions. The Corona study in particular has been a really complex work to make over the past two months, involving well over 200 separate drawings to complete the final composition. I enjoy the complexity of course, it allows for a lot of editing and fine tuning, that I think improves the work immeasurably.
The image at the top of the post is a work in progress detail, a small crop, which shows a new method I’m developing to move the ink in a more kinetic way than I’ve previously managed to do. It’s a technique I’m going to pursue further, I like the energy it contains!
Best as ever,
Chuck Elliott
PS If your membership is currently paused, but you’d like this piece for your home, please do resubscribe and I’ll send it out to you.
