Started by considering what elements of McCarthy’s work are important and interesting, looking for motifs and recurring imagery. Wanted each print to be coherent and link with the others, whether that be with their subject matter or what they represented. Wanted images to have deeper layer and story to them.
Place is an important aspect of McCarthy’s writing. He often describes the settings or landscapes featured in poetic detail. Coupling this with the recurring theme of death, I wanted to depict 5 settings where deaths had occurred in his stories, without showing the actual occurrence. Wasn’t really leading anywhere and struggled depicting the scenes as described in his writing and conveying what his words conjured up in my imagination. Although, I was particularly drawn to how unassuming the images looked despite the dark history they had.
Nature is another aspect McCarthy describes extensively. 5 illustrations of trees I believed could tell a story, each tree representing a different place or situation, with one dead and burnt to again show the theme. This became quickly uninteresting and too easy; I have done lots of work about trees in the past and this would not have challenged me.
Kept wrestling with place and landscapes, simplifying, making symmetrical, creating shapes and depth and texture in my roughs. Throughout my research I was continually drawn to the print work of Mexican artist Leopoldo Mendez, often showing village people and protesters interacting with authoritarian figures, and the political unrest in Mexico. The way he uses lino and mark making to portray light and emotion and energy is awe-inspiring and he was a strong reference for me. I thought that the use of Lino really complimented the dark, often unsettling imagery. Although my tests with screen print worked, it lacked this macabre feeling, and where the mono print work does achieve this, the process of cutting and working with Lino had me hooked. Figures became of interest and after stumbling across a photograph of some Mexican skull masks I felt like they fit aptly with the themes of the work. At the same time I came back to the place idea, specifically the house and then to a motel based on ‘no country for old men’, the tree fitting nicely in the middle and two skull figures on either side; and so my final roughs came as an amalgamation of all the separate ideas and roughs that came before. I love the idea of the whole set working together as a whole, the composition of each complimenting them all. The moon, as with Idea Pictures’ stands as the consistent death theme and again allows them to work as a coherent series.
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