I try to push the boundaries of what is possible with mark making in printmaking.
Sandra Crisp LG: “In your monochrome work, you achieve a great variety of tone and fine detail through various print techniques. Large – scale Linocut works such as ‘Conditional Love’ 157.5 cm x 94 cm make me wonder how you use specific tools to achieve this.”
Ade Adesina: “I am a traditional printmaker using a mix of traditional and modern tools. I try to push the boundaries of what is possible with mark making in printmaking. Conditional Love is a print that I made in 2019. Unlike most of my other prints that tell a story, Conditional Love was meant to be a stand-alone statement. The print shows an image of a rose covered by a bell jar with bees trying to get access to the rose. This seems like an impossible mission. Over the past few years I have read so many articles about the dangers facing the bee population around the globe. Either by insecticide, habitat loss or climate change. This print can be seen as focusing on bees and their fight for survival. It can also be seen to represent love and rejection
“Mark making is very important in my work. I have always made it one of my missions to create new ways of working with linocut. Being a printmaker, I experiment with different mediums of printmaking. For example: woodcut, screenprint, etching etc. I particularly enjoy working with etching because of the range of tones that can be achieved. Earlier on in my career, due to the prohibitive cost of producing etchings and the size limit that comes with etching, I decided to experiment on lino by trying to achieve the same marks that you can achieve by etching. Lino also gave me the freedom to work on a larger scale and lino can be worked on exclusively in the studio until it comes to the actual printing of the lino block. This reduces the need of access to a printmaking workshop and reduces the cost of making the work compared to etching.
“For the past couple of years I have been using Dremal multi tools. This has given me a lot of freedom in my mark making. I think about the Dremal as my pen and I use micro drills from 0.2mm up to 1.5mm. The best way to describe how I use the micro drills and the effect that it achieves is to compare it to pointillism. An important point to make is that when it comes to linocut, every mark that you make is in negative and also back to front. Therefore to create light tone it takes a lot of drilling. It takes months of drilling to create light tone for a print. Conditional Love took around a year to make off and on. I also use various etching tools such as etching needles and burnishers to make fine lines or to create different tones and movement. The kinds of marks that you get from these tools are quite delicate which makes the printing process challenging and interesting. During the editioning process sometimes I can only print up to three prints a day before loosing details as the ink fills up the delicate lines cut into the lino block.
As a printmaker, what I love most are the endless possibilities. I hope that I can continue to push the boundaries and find new mays of making prints.”
Ade Adesina LG, 2021
www.adeadesina.com
A Question of Process:
#1 Angela Eames LG
#2 James Faure Walker LG
#3 Ece Clarke LG
#4 Neil Weerdmeester LG