Digging in the Dirt

Yesterday, I got out my old degree portfolio as I had been worried that it had been damaged by a little flood damage in the garage as I had run out of space to keep these previous drawings and prints safely. Inside the portfolio was five sketch books that go back into my early days, the sketch book for Deep Root Down. When I went to Exmoor in my second year at art college. Little did I know that this visit would provide me with the materials for my litho prints in the third year.

These litho print gave me the confidence to use use print making and still I would have liked to have a few more years, if I had made it to postgrad to work further. Also one of my prints got me to win a competition and have the print exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts for the Stowells sponsored show. Little did I know that my involvement would take me.

Digging out these sketch books was in some ways walking over my grave as it was work that had been done some time ago, a long time ago and I could see the faults in it. Yet, within those sketches, I knew there was something that I could take away from it. One of my tutors told me that sometimes you don't need to go from A to B to C, but you can leap ahead and this is how I look at these sketches. I have leaped ahead both mentally as well as artistically. There is the thread that links all of this work up from the future to the present and back to the past.

Seeing all the pictures that I had worked on and there were other sketch books that I had thrown away as there is only so many you can keep over the years. Looking at these pieces, I begin to wonder if I have kept the right ones? Some of these sketches did become proper prints and have survived. The portfolio was not damaged and so I can let it go. Yet deep in side it is still a part of me.