New Print | Fire in the Belly

Screen printing is a flexible process and you can approach it from many ways. Some printmakers barely get their hands dirty, drawing and laying out most of their images digitally. Conversely there are artists who work in a very spontaneous way, painting directly onto the printing screen, or cutting stencils by hand and building up layers of block colour to produce their final designs.

My approach with Fire in the Belly was to work with screen printing as directly as possible; integrating the technique into the creation of the artwork and avoiding using the process to simply reproduce an image. This means not using paper or plywood to make ‘original’ designs that I print from, but drawing and painting directly onto layers of clear film which I expose the screen with, so that all of the gestures of the mark making are as immediate and visible as possible.

It also means not mocking up layouts and colours on a computer first, but building up the print in layers as I work. Fire in the Belly is the first of a few pieces i’ll make in this way. Overall there are six layers here, in different colours and opacities to create the final result.

The idea for the image itself came from a variation on Fire in the Mountain, which is the name of a festival i’ve heard of (but never been to). I wanted to make a strong, life-affirming and energetic picture. I hope people are drawing on their own internal reserves right now, in order to get through the uncertain months that lie ahead.