Clive Riggs

MA Printmaking

Clive’s work is fundamentally based on drawing. Working from drawings made in the landscape, in sketchbooks, the sketches are developed and adjusted during the printmaking process to produce abstracted images which retain an element of real- world appearances. Working on copper plates (occasionally steel), a number of techniques are combined: hard ground etching, aquatint, dry point, sugar lift, stop- out, scraping and burnishing, to create a variety of marks and textures.

Current work uses drawings of trees as a start point for the expression of anthropomorphic qualities with underlying emotional content. As the process involves no predetermined, distinct end point, so interpretation by the viewer is correspondingly left open.

Because the surface of the plate is worked on in a series of processes (sometimes up to six separate aquatints and sugar lifts), the resulting prints show the process of time in the same way the trees do. As a result, the prints can be looked at not only for the content- the image that is created- but also for the surface; the marks on the paper which are both planned and accidental. This creates a sense of mystery which encourages further looking.

All prints are etching and aquatint.