Risograph Series 2023: In the Garden

Posted on February 28, 2023February 28, 2023 by Amy Jane

This series, ’In the Garden’, is inspired by memories I have of my childhood and the objects that captivated me. Remembering and reimagining these items as an adult gives them a new meaning, yearning for my youth and looking forward to reliving it through the eyes of my son.

Whimsy and imaginative play marked my childhood. I was often (still am) lost in thought, and caught merrily talking to myself. Carefree and happy, these images are a reminder that life shouldn’t be taken too seriously, and we should always take time out to play.

The garden depicted in the images is my current garden, in my adult home. Superimposed in the landscape are significant objects that hold deep memories of my childhood, objects that hold nostalgia for most South Africans. What birthday party is complete without a jumping castle? Or a garden without it’s hand-painted gnome. Who can forget the magic of riding on a carousel, the joy of balloons on your birthday, or the wonder of a disco ball sparkling in the room? And why would we want to forget these things? I think it is so important for us to keep hold of them and to return to them from time to time, savouring the emotions they stir up.

All these risographs began as digital paintings on Photoshop or Procreate. Here are the eight digital paintings:

Once the digital paintings were complete I sent the raw files to DreamPress in Cape Town. DreamPress is the only Risography studio in South Africa, run by Candice Jezek. Her team took my raw digital files and created the beautiful risograph prints. I have wanted to explore Risography for so long and was not disappointed! In fact, I can’t wait till I can do it again, soon!

The first of the prints, ’Carousel’, was exhibited at the prestigious exhibition ’International Original Print Exhibition’ in London’s Bankside Gallery during 2022. It was a massive career highlight for me. These prints are also going to be exhibited in an exhibition later in 2023, curated by Genre Pretorius.

Each print is 20x20cm and is part of an edition of 25. They are each a bargain of R800. If you would like to purchase one, they are for sale at The Golden Goose Artistry in Pretoria’s Brooklyn Mall.

Backyard Series

Posted on February 15, 2023February 15, 2023 by Amy Jane

This series is FINALLY DONE and FOR SALE! At long last. And it is selling out quickly! Framed, these prints are ONLY R6000. Don’t miss out on the chance to own one of these limitted edition prints for yourself. If you need a bit of playful cheer in your life – these will deliver just that to you.

Here is the story behind them:

In 2021 I was pregnant and due to some health concerns, I was on bedrest. I’ve never been good at resting. I turned my bed into my art studio and furiously planned and sketched, and prepped for multiple projects I wanted to do after the arrival of Fynch. One of those projects is my ’Backyard Series’.

In preparation for Fynch’s arrival I found myself nostalgic for my childhood. Memories flooded back to me about the peaceful hours that made up those early years of my life. What stood out for me were the memories of my childhood garden and the events that filled it. Whether that be an afternoon of imaginative play, or the thrill of a birthday party, my garden was my happy place.

Not much has changed. Especially while pregnant, my garden was my refuge. Our house was being renovated and I would escape to our huge backyard to get away from the incessant banging and loud noises. I imagined this garden to be the one that Fynch would grow up in – lost in his own imagination and play. (Little did I know we’d be emigrating two years later).

I also spent time watching the goings on that occupy the garden. My pets, the visiting birds, the flowers, the weather. I began to let my imagination create stories of these critters and happenings taking place in this space. From these day dreams I would return to my bed and sketch up the ideas.

When Fynch finally arrived, I realised that my time working in the specific technique of screenprinting that I had been doing over the last few years, was so longer something I could commit to, or wanted to continue, do to the massive time and energy constraints I had now from motherhood. I had adapted my screenprinting process specifically to fit my new life, and the ’Backyard series’, all the preparative work I had put into it, would need to find another way of becoming a reality.

I was fortunate to meet the artist Barry van der Westhuizen, who at the time was building a community print studio called Curious Little Press. I decided to hand over my drawings to Barry and have this series printed at Curious Little Press. THe process was amazing from start to finish. Barry’s professionalism and enthusiasm (and patience) in the project made the collaboration such a joy. Over a few months, he turned my drawings and planning into these beautiful five prints.

These prints are tiny editions of only 3 prints! They are 60x60cm large and radiate colour. Luminous and cheerful, they are the perfect realisation of my pregnant day dreaming. Each print is available for R6000 (Framed). As they are small editions, they are limited and selling out quickly.

If you would like to buy one of these prints, email hello@amyjanevdb.com.

Arse-Cream

Posted on February 8, 2023February 8, 2023 by Amy Jane

A new series of work that has taken my studio by storm is my ’Nipples & Confetti’ series. Naughty and playful, these pieces are meant to bring joy and some light-hearted fun to you. As a self-proclaimed prude, it took a lot of courage to finally break through my own limitations and start making work like this. I suppose one of the reasons I was finally able to do this was my journey into motherhood. After breastfeeding for 19 months, boobs will simply never quite be the same for me! ha!

Not just boobs, but every ’naughty’ and ’taboo’ body part. Living in an era where there is such a dichotomy of either, extravagantly sexually open confidence, radiating sexual health and positivity; while on the other side the conservative bunch of us still trip over all this openness and sexual bravity. Like most things in life, I navigate this with humour.

Adding these body parts into bizarre and humourous scenes is intended to lighten up my view of them, and hopefully yours too. With a good chuckle, these pieces (hopefully) smash through any notion of the body parts being something to be ashamed of or embarrassed about.

Arse-Cream in particular was conceived one day when I was standing in line at my favourite ice-cream joint, and I overheard the thick south african pronunciation, ARRSE-CRREEEM PLEES. It instantly inspired me and the idea would not stop bugging me until it was finally complete and editioned in my studio.

If you would like to purchase one of these conversation starters for your home (perfect for the bathroom artwork spot that you’ve been wondering what to hang there…) please email me at hello@amyjanevdb.com. I only have FOUR available and they’re selling for the bargain price of R1000.

The digital image I created on my iPad for this print. I conceptualise my prints firstly by sketching the ideas out. After that, I create digital collages or paintings of these sketches and use them as my reference and starting point for most of my prints.

I use the digital image to draw out the image onto a sheet of acetate and being my print. Through a back and forth process, I block out areas of colour, print a colour, block out more, print more, and so on. This print took a total of 10 layers to complete. The process is very repetitive and therefore beautifully meditative. I enjoy it so much, enter a state of flow, and the day flies by

Life in colour: Enchanted

Posted on February 1, 2023February 1, 2023 by Amy Jane

Hello friends! Welcome to a new year. I last wrote a blog and sent out my newsletter in July 2021, a few days before Fynch arrived in this world. It was a long and welcomed break, but I am ready and eager to kick off this community again. As always, I am grateful and overwhelmed by the support my community lavishes on me. I hope to give back to you by filling your internet and inbox with delightful treats for your eyes and soul. Enjoy!

By now, you should have heard the news. We are imminently emigrating to The Netherlands. What seems like a sudden adventure has been in the making for quite sometime now. Mark and I have wanted an overseas adventure for a while and we are beyond excited to start this new season. Excited and realistic. We are aware that ahead of us we have the biggest emotional and physical challenges we have yet to face. We’ll approach them like we have every other one life’s thrown us: together and with a healthy dose of humour.

As we wrap up our season in South Africa I have to make some serious decisions when it comes to my studio and my art practice. I’ve spent 10 years building up a professional, fully equipped print studio and now I need to downscale and start from scratch in some ways. In the last few years my practice has focused on two major mediums: Screenprinting and gouache/watercolour painting. With this in mind, I’m ruthlessly culling my studio of everything that doesn’t fit into these two modes of practice. I will take one box, and one back-pack of art supplies, and the rest will be sold and re-homed to new loving artists. I know it seems drastic! Perhaps even slightly ‘over-the-top’. Have I ever done anything moderately in my life?! If we’re planning to start from scratch, I might as well do it properly!

This sort of challenge, I believe, sets your creativity in rapid motion. To give myself such dire limitations of art supplies will catalyst me into creating my best work yet. This is how creativity works. It’s always up for the challenge.

This last month I completed my next gouache painting for The Golden Goose Artistry. This kitsch and colourful overload of the senses is exactly how I’m feeling right now. Life is full HD colour right now. And there is no focus point. Every tiny thing demands my full attention. Every ball is set in motion, every work is in process. There is no calm and rest, and yet my heart is at rest and alive in the midst of all this vibrancy of life’s unexpected journey.

I’ve discovered Caran D’Ache gouache palette paint and they are amazing! They are heavily pigmented and dries beautifully matte. Love them!

These gouache paintings I make monthly for The Golden Goose Artistry are almost like a visual diary of my life and the big thoughts and things I am processing. I’ve come to love them so much that they are a highlight of my month. I also learn so much while painting, about layering and colour and ideas that I can use for Screenprinting. Often one of my gouache paintings will inspire a screenprint, or at least help me problem solve a layering/colour issue I am troubleshooting in my printing. They go hand-in-hand as techniques for me. My gouache paintings make me a better screenprinter and my screenprinting makes me a better painter. Ha!

‘Enchanted’ will be framed and on sale later this month, from Golden Goose Artistry, for R3600. If you would like to reserve the artwork please email me at hello@amyjanevdb.com. I will be making giclee (digital, fine art) prints of the painting as well, for R250. If you would like to buy one of those please email me as well.

Until next time, DAG! (Or Goodbye, in Dutch 😉 )

The Makings of “When Pigs Fly”

Posted on June 3, 2021June 18, 2021 by Amy Jane

This print started in my head. It skipped my sketchbook entirely.

Mark’s instagram photo that became the inspiration for this piece.

This photo was taken during sunset at our old home in Alberton. We had such a wonderful time in that home, and the sunsets were always spectacular. Unreal almost, with a touch of magical realism. We spent almost five years in that home – easily our five happiest years spent together. We made deep friendships and connected with the vast nature there that we were fortunate enough to be surrounded by.

So, if you had told me that I would uproot my happy little life in Alberton, to move to Pretoria, to be closer to our families, SO THAT WE COULD HAVE A CHILD, I would have thought you mad. Leaving Alberton was not on my to-do list, and having children was not on my life’s plan. I was not the maternal type who felt broody or dreamed of a big family one day. I was content to spend all my days with Mark and our fur-babies. Worse still, the more my mother insisted that, “one day you will feel differently”, the more I insisted I would not.

Friends were falling pregnant left, right and centre. Ensuring the population growth would steadily continue and I had all the reasons in my mind for why not having children was what I wanted. I was content. Mark, however, had always wanted a big family and dreamed of being a dad. He knew going into our relationship that we were not on the same page, and it was settled right from the get-go that we would not have children. We would be non-breeders. When people asked me when we are having kids, I either told them we do not want children, or, the more socially accepted version, “Not yet, we’re not ready”. There was a lot of pressure to have children, but it didn’t change my mind. Having a child was not something to casually happen upon, and until my mind was well and truly changed, I was not falling into the parent-club ‘trap’ unwillingly.

But then.

In the last two years something started to change though. I started becoming broody, but not in the way you would think. I started to see Mark with babies and children from friends and family members and I could tangibly feel his yearning for his own child. Something I couldn’t understand, or relate to, but was so real. My broodiness, on his behalf, grew until it overtook my own stubborn assuredness of not wanting to be a mother.

So when I finally realised that I did want a child, we moved back to Pretoria. Back home.

This piece, “When Pigs Fly” is about that surreal magical realism that happened in my heart slowly over the last few years. In a plot-twist to my own life’s planned narrative, I’m now sitting at home, five weeks left in this pregnancy and I could not be happier or more excited to be venturing into motherhood. With Mark by my side. And the fur-babies.

Turns out, pigs do fly. And they’ll be flying this July (we’re waiting, Fynch! Come on!).

The phrase “when pigs fly” is an adynaton—a figure of speech so hyperbolic that it describes an impossibility. The implication of such a phrase is that the circumstances in question will never occur. The phrase has been used in various forms since the 1600s as a sarcastic remark.

The Process:

I started with an image in my mind’s eye of the piece I wanted to make. I knew Mark’s Instagram was full of beautiful photos to choose from, so I spent some time nostalgically going through his profile until I settled on this image.

I then used Photoshop to mock-up my concept. Using Mark’s photo and images I found on the internet, I combined these elements to create something visual that could represent what I was imagining the work to look like.

Once happy with the composition, I sketched out the image on a 60x60cm cartridge paper. At this point I simplify the images to fit my screenprinting style, while also adding in specific elements that form the visual vocabulary of my work – like the pink clouds.

Now it’s time to make the positives. This part is so meditative, but can also be really tricky – making sure that my registration between layers stays as close to perfect as I can get it. I make my positives with permanent markers on acetate.

The first layer I have created a positive for will actually be the last layer I print! And it will be the purple layer. It is my “key” layer which helps me keep all my other layers in registration.

These are all the separate positives I have created for “When Pigs Fly”. Below is a GIF to show you how they each layer over each other, in the correct order I will be printing them: Light Pink, Dark Pink, Light Green, Dark Green, Purple, Aqua and yellow.

Now all that is left to do is expose each positive, and print the edition!

My New Studio!

Posted on June 3, 2021June 3, 2021 by Amy Jane

I’ve come a long way from my first art studio in the dusty, cold garage in our Alberton home to the beautiful space in our backyard in Pretoria now.

When we found out we were pregnant I knew that I had to make an outside studio a priority. When we moved into our home in Pretoria I set up my studio in the middle of the house, and true to my messy nature, it tended to spread out across the entire house. My equipment was spread between the garage, house, outside areas, and really any spot I could find and negotiate my way into.

I’ve really tried to be as non-toxic as I can be with my printmaking process, but the reality is that there are no true non-toxic processes – only less-toxic. My chemicals, inks, emulsions, paints, acid baths, and sharp tools, all immediately looked a lot more dangerous and imposing than it did before pregnancy. A lot of my equipment is also very bulky, with sharp edges, and loud noises. With a baby on it’s way, the home-studio was no longer a functional space. Nor was the idea of renting a studio space outside of our property.

We are fortunate enough to have a really large property with a generous backyard. (it used to be a small vegetable farm in the 50s). So, we began to plan the studio space. Early on in the planning, Mark found the most magnificent 3m tall doors on Facebook Marketplace only a few roads down from us! We quickly bought them and then planned the studio around the door specs. I wanted an industrial look and feel, so that I wouldn’t feel bad messing the space up. I’ve only been in here for little over a month and the floor and walls already have so much ink and paint splattered on them. I also needed a space with a lot of natural light, so we sourced beautiful large cottage pane windows for my office section of the studio, and re-used windows from our main home renovation as the other windows in the studio. In fact, the window from my old home-studio is now in my new garden studio!

This was my home-studio space (after we removed all the walls). This was me trying to save every piece of lino to possibly repurpose them into linoleum prints – but the lino was too old and brittle.

It took two weeks. TWO WEEKS. But it would be amiss if I didn’t tell you that the only reason we were able to do this so quickly and beautifully was by the generosity of our family and friends. I cannot explain to you how enormously stressful this renovation has been. There were days where I felt utterly broken and that I would never get out of the anxious muddy haze I was trapped in. Yet, at every step in the process we were rallied by family and friends bringing us meals, groceries, distractions and support. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I would not have made it through were it not for these humans!

During this time, my pillar of emotional strength (you know who you are) stood with me in my backyard and told me, “just blink a few times and imagine it finished, visualise the end of this”. It was impossible to do that then, but as I sit in my studio now, it really does feel like it was a few blinks ago that it was muddy plaster and a dusty catastrophe.

The front of my studio currently. We still need to lay the paving again, but all in it’s time.

I could not be happier in my studio space. Now, all my equipment fits functionally all in one space. I’m far away from the noise of the street, tucked away in the lush beauty of our garden. I’m joined daily by my dogs and cats who have each found their respective favourite spots in the studio. There is space beside my in the office nook to have a camping cot, or pram for Fynch. There is sunshine flooding in

This is a view of my office space. The studio is built in a sort-of L-shape. We needed to build it around existing structures in our garden (the boerhole outhouse, garage, and flatlet)

Well, that’s that! I hope you enjoyed this and come visit soon! x

The Makings of “Partedahs”

Posted on May 14, 2021May 14, 2021 by Amy Jane

Love them or hate them, Hadeda’s are everyday familiar visitors to any South African home. The sound of one passing Hadeda is enough to startle you, but when a colony of Hadedas (yup, that’s their collective noun) lands on your wall or roof, it takes a strong constitution to not jump right out of your skin or stare with indignation out of your window.

Quite frankly, they should be known as “a SCREECH of Hadedas”, or better yet, “a PARTY of Hadedas”. Colony sounds far too dignified and pompously colonial.

During my time in bed-rest earlier this year I became a lot more aware of my surroundings, and almost looked forward to the daily screech and visit of the neighbourhood Hadeda flock. They reminded me of the noisy, teenagers I used to teach – in their own world, completely oblivious to the noise and disruption they were making. Joyful and full of stories. Without any warning they would arrive as loudly as they possibly could, much like my Grade 10s students would arrive for art lessons. Caught up in midway conversations and social cues, enraptured in their own world. And as suddenly as they arrive, swiftly they’re off to their next hang-out.

In my screenprint I have designed for “Partedahs” I have created the scene I envision happening daily on my roof. And now every time I hear this unruly gang of Hadedas screeching on my roof I enjoy imagining them in some version of this image.

The print will be screenprinted onto Fabriano. The image size is 60x60cm, the paper size 70x70cm. I will OF COURSE be using my usual mix of pinks and greens, while introducing some more neons too. It will be a 9 layered screenprint.

The Process:

Hopefully this provides a bit more insight for you about the process and planning that goes into screenprinting.

1. This was the initial sketch in my sketchbook, during bed-rest, that inspired the piece.

3. This image shows 5 transparent layers placed on top of each other. Although it is in black and white, each layer, once exposed/burned onto one of my silkscreen screens, will be printed in either a shade of pink or green.

4. This is all 9 layers placed on top of each other. Below is a GIF for you to see how each layer builds on from one another. It’s tedious work that takes a lot of concentration. I also find that working in black and white, but thinking in colour, makes my brain hurt! I work with transparent colours, so I also have to think about the different colours they will make when overlaid. For example, if I layer green over pink it creates a brown!

So, now all 9 positives are ready to be exposed/burned onto my screens. I also have to decide how big I want to make this edition. I like to keep my editions small, but I’m thinking that I might do an edition of 10. (Thats quite big for me!). Watch this space to see the print progress 🙂

I will make sure to film how I expose/burn these 9 layers onto 9 different screens, and then go about printing them. I’m hoping to have them printed this coming month. Fingers crossed x