The Knight, Death and the Devil

'LAZARUS' (FROM THE ANCESTRAL DNA SERIES)

The idea and the process

Following on from my explorations in DNA relationships and ways of tracking the movements of my ancestors around the world, I reached a point where it felt as if I was trying to resurrect the past.  Lazarus refers to that act of restoring something but being left with the melancholy feelings that stem from having witnessed something beyond this present time.

The barren land, the stories of the grandmother figure, looking at the viewer from the top left, (recounting her personal catastrophe and her determination to protect her family), are indicative of the personal and human stories that accompany and give voice to any national disaster.


So the image, although very personal, as with all my other work, I hope it goes beyond my cosmography to speak of our shared humanity and the complexities, the highs and the lows of our existence. And always of hope beyond. 

The images depicted on the face trace the movement of young children across the Anatolian planes, carrying only the cooking utensils that they would use to keep them alive. The image taken from a 1923 Red Cross publication, sets the scene for the tumultuous years that unfolded from that time until the passing of my parents and my recent visits to Crete. The olive trees, the people being transported away from the war-torn coastal regions of Asia Minor and back the other way in an exchange of populations, the boats, broken sculpture and mixed funerary stones of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Greeks.


Whereas I normally leave white spaces for visual and emotional ‘respite’, this time the feelings were overwhelming and so the face was flooded with these narratives. Hope springs eternal despite that, but sometimes it is not always possible to escape the pain, and that is alright.  We have to acknowledge loss before we can move on to happier times.

The above image shows the 'positive'.  This is the exact copy of the drawing printed by a specialist process, which creates a dense, impenetrable image so that when it is placed against the coated screen, no light can affect the coating.  This is important because light hardens the exposed areas and what is protected by the positive is left unaffected and soft enough to wash away. The longer the exposure time to UV lights, the greater the chance of penetration and the less detail will be left. The exposure times are really a guide, and much depends on the quality of the emulsion, the mesh on the screen and of course the way the image is drawn. This particular print took me several attempts to get right, making it the most expensive print I have made and the most time-consuming. 

Washing away the screen after exposure reveals a negative stencil, which will allow the ink to be pushed through where the black lines were, creating a positive or exact copy of the original.  The amount of definition is also dependant on many variables and can mean that prints are not what one intended and need to be rethought. In the copies below, the amount of definition just was not enough, so I had to go back to the drawing board. 

To achieve this effect, I resorted to having Giclee prints made of the original, on which I printed two layers of ochre/gold with a mild overlap each time to create a sense of depth.  This process basically replicated details of the original which the screenprinting process could not.  Sometimes this is an advantage and changes the appearance of the original to something quite elegant and mysterious, but in this case, the narrative nature of the images was lost and that was not what I needed. Thankfully others loved this too so I reclaimed all the costs of this rather expensive production and was able to communicate the original idea.  Lots of lessons learned despite all the frustrations along the way.