Ellen Heck

19/06/20

I listened to a podcast with Ellen Heck today, I love the delicacy of her prints and the way she incorporates wood block with drypoint. I’m still a big fan of drypoint, I’ve just not had much opportunity to do more. However I’m starting to think more to the future, a future without the pandemic that is. It really excited me listening to Ellen, the podcast even went into some detail about her practice and how she makes her prints.

She mentioned a huge inspiration for her were the prints of Mary Cassatt, which I can really see in her work now she’s pointed it out. I don’t know her prints so well, but her paintings were ahead of the times, which says a lot considering the limits put onto her gender as well. What was interesting was that Ellen spoke about the time spent with these prints, she owned a book of Cassatt’s prints that she used to analyse to help her understand Cassatt’s process. Ellen’s work definitely has that lightness of touch of Cassatt’s. I may have purchased a secondhand edition of this book!

She said several interesting things in this podcast, one was her colour studies, which reminds me that the colour studies I did at the beginning of lockdown were useful studies and I’ll do more when I can. The other was her description of printmaking as ‘a collaboration with chance’. What a great way of thinking about the process. You have to embrace this challenge, it suits her because she’s quite a graphic artist and it takes a bit of control out of her hands and gives her the opportunity to work with the unexpected, which is exactly my experience of printmaking. It’s so good for my work in this way. Although the line on the plate can feel very direct at the point of contact.

Heck also mentioned a podcast with printmaker Kathryn Polk, I don’t know her work and plan to take a listen. They mentioned her in relation to making exciting work later in life, which is comforting for me! Her lithos do look exciting. I have so much more experimenting and time to be spent with print. This is truly the beginning, despite such tricky times.

Ellen also uses lots of photos as references. It’s funny how photography as reference really divides people. I feel there is a place for it, it’s such a useful tool in the kit, but being slave to a photo would just be dull to produce as an artist and as the person looking at the work.