About
Julian MeredithProfile
I transfer images from large planks of wood, I also transfer images directly from objects which are found in the landscape in which I work… deer, feathers, fish etc. A proportion of my work is constructed or drawn on the landscape – fish, cetaceans and more ambiguous images, hundreds of feet long, some permanent and some drawn in sand and snow, often with a large rake.
I have always had a deep respect for people who live and work in close connection with the natural world. My own work is an extension of my practical knowledge of aspects of the wild. For years I drew flowers, but it wasn’t until I started keeping bees that I began to understand them.
I gathered branches from dead elms and began making constructions, twenty feet or so across, and increasingly large prints. The printmaking process impregnates the wood with pigment and paraffin, giving it an almost fossil-like quality.
The prints that I take from the blocks have a light, airy quality, the opposite to the nature of the wood itself. As the printed paper comes up off the block it’s a bit like the spirit of the fossilized wood.
The use of the blue colour also helps transform the earthiness of the wood, via the flow of the grain, into something more akin to water and air. Fish images are somehow hard-wired into my brain – they are genetically imprinted.
