The woodblock diary of Alex Gillies…

So a while back I posted about how I had recently found the etching/drawing medium of scratchboard – mainly to supplement my inability to make woodcuts easily while I live in New York away from my home & studio back in Australia.

Well not much has changed geographically but I feel like taking the time to update here, my initial impetus, to say that drawing on scratchboards has dramatically changed my artistic desires and inclinations – not only my composition skills and speed of which I work. Thankfully there is no monetary motives to me creating, so I do exactly what I feel like unhindered. But like any new path you find yourself on you end up exploring the possibilities, testing yourself and as always trying to find the best way to get that thought, that idea, that (barely in focus) picture in your head out and onto the page.

I have said it before but I can’t draw (in the traditional sense). I have had no schooling in making art and put a blank white page in front of me and all you will get in return is my paralysis. While I do pull most of my inspiration from the modernism of early 20th century European art (Futurism, Dada, Bauhaus, and in particular Der Blaue Reiter and German Expressionism) it is not what I feel compelled to try to make. There is a certain realism that I am drawn to when I create that stands in contrast to my inspirations. It is as if, no matter how strange or beautiful or disturbing something of mine is – it could equally exist in the real world – as if it was a photo as much as any other document.

Woodcuts have for a long while given me an “in” to creating but of late I have started to consider the how and why of it. Scratchboards in particular have gotten me thinking. I don’t actually have the answers to the amorphous how and why but this much I have worked out.

I draw/carve/scratch/print because it gives me a positive feeling of worth. There should be nothing surprising in that though.

I often draw the thoughts I don’t have another outlet for, be it verbal or otherwise. Sometimes I simply draw the things I want to think about but don’t want to talk about. Even the time spent creating gives me the space to better understand what I am trying to clarify in my own head. And….   sometimes it’s just a picture, nothing more.

I find the ability to erase, modify, update or reset, detrimental to saying what I want to say. I question and second guess just about everything I do so working in mediums where the cut can’t be undone, the area removed can’t be replaced means that moving ahead is the only course of action. I trust my first impressions and there is a strange honesty in one’s ability and intent when your first attempt is your only attempt.

There is something inherently foreign to me in the way a painter or illustrator add to an image (each line, each layer building upon the last). I have always been drawn to the idea of taking away. Stripping back until you find that perfect spot where you can illicit the maximum reaction/emotion/dialogue with the minimum amount of information – equal to a sculptor I suppose.

I love going black to white. Finding the negative space, coming to something almost in reverse. It’s like slowly turning up a light until you are finished and the room is illuminated for the first time.

With magnifying glass in hand, of late I have relished the smallest of detail. Creating lines and shapes, so very deliberate but just about impossible to see when standing back and looking with the naked eye. In the way you look at pop art or even billboard sized posters – finding that the image is just a collection of separate dots arranged just so as to fool your brain into identifying it as the content and not the physicality of the actual item.

Now none of this was really the reason why I sat down to do this post. I figured I would just give an update on what I have been drawing of late. But as with such things, the above is what I think about while I work away. The above is me watching me work and wondering what the hell I am doing and why I am doing it instead of going outside or spending time with my friends. The above is what came to me as soon as I started writing.

Why I creative things has always been as interesting to me as the actual creative practice itself. I blame all that philosophy I studied at university…

Ps: my instagram account @againstthewoodgrain is where I put up most of my scratchboard, prints and other creations. Usually about five minutes after I have finished if it has all worked and I am so chuffed I want to show everyone.

Pps: if you are not already aware, my online store on the Etsy website (search: alexgillieswoodcuts) is where I sell my prints and my scratchboard originals.