Colin Kirby-Green: Alresford Creek 1 & 2

Chance is a wonderful thing, and thanks to its good graces I recently stumbled across an artist by the name of Colin Kirby-Green. I was out window-shopping when I spied two aquatints at a price that didn't reflect their quality in a place that plainly didn't recognise what they had and now I find myself, for the first time in my life, as the owner of original artworks by someone else. It's a nice feeling and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Alresford Creek I; 18 x 13 cm aquatint edition of 50

The prints were made in 1980 and show Alresford Creek near Brightlingsea in Essex. They show the creek wending through its flood plain below a flat sky which takes up half the plate. There are three simple transitions of colour. The creek area is a soft, dirty green. This fades into a delicate deep pink for the distant hills and the sky is a gradual transition from clean paper to a barely-there grey-blue. As Colin himself is quick to point out, the nature of the colouring strongly resembles a watercolour. The delicacy of the print combined with the flatness and haziness of the subject means the pieces are very relaxed and have a real stillness to them.

Colin has had a long career and is still going strong so I thought rather than just force my thoughts upon you I ought to find out his memories of the pieces.

Primarily an oil painter, he had been working in watercolours to great success. His gallery, the Grafitti Gallery in London, had the sense to see the potential for prints in his way of working so made their facilities available to him.

"I spent many interesting days learning to etch in copper, especially combined with the subtle use of aquatint. Their studio employed very talented printers to actually print the work on their top of the range etching presses. They specialised in one plate editions and with great care different colours were worked into different parts of the plate so the results were produced in one printing, with no over prints for different colours. Alresford Creek 1 is based on a view local to where I now live in Brightlingsea and because I was so new to the whole process I hadn't thought to draw it all out in reverse in order to have it come out the right way round as a print! Pretty naive eh? The studio owners were very pleased with the result but I was not, and said 'I must do this again in reverse because the landscape is actually the other way round'. So I made the plate for Alresford Creek 2 in reverse and this was a success."

There are enough differences between the two pieces that I didn't realise they were the same scene made twice. In fact I assumed they were the same place from opposite sides of the creek or in opposite directions. That knowledge makes the differences between the two fascinating; it reveals Colin's "handwriting" as an etcher and starts to trace his development in the medium. The second print is far more delicately drawn and the textures more refined as he has plainly taken on board lessons from the first plate. I am unsure whether some differences are down to differences in the aquatinting process or the printing but regardless, when 1 & 2 are interpreted as a sequence and a progression rather than as two views of the same subject the work takes on a sudden extra level of interest.

Alresford Creek II; 18 x 13 cm aquatint edition of 50

Its now more than 30 years since the prints were made and Colin is still working. One thing he is especially enthusiastic about is the painting expedition to Umbria he leads each year. To find out about the next one, which takes place next June and looks like good value, click here.