A selection of work created over the years, starting when I was a teenager with the dancer on the ball, inspired by Picasso's 1905 oil painting Young acrobat on a ball, also known as girl on a ball.
It's been a while! Let's catch up...
I did some stone litho at Morley College in south London using my dancers, inspired by the American choreographer William Forsythe's dance shows at Sadler's Wells in London. You can see the evolution of the prints here, including some pics of the limestone.
Stone litho is a traditional, laborious process in several stages that involves grinding the stone to create a smooth surface without a previous image; creating an image on the stone, preserving it with a mixture of gum arabic and acid; and finally pulling prints off the stone using a printing press, adding a new colour at a time.
The last print is too crowded, I know!
The Making of Blossoms step by step, using lavender oil to make the blossom marks, and chine collé for the final print
It's been a while. I've learned some new techniques, such as photo polymer, and experimented with soft ground etching, collagraphs and monoprints.
Blue dancers was on display at Made 2023 at the Morley Gallery near Waterloo.
Unravelling (soft ground etchings)
And here's some more lockdown lino.
I'm also on Instagram now - https://www.instagram.com/julia_kollewe/?hl=en
Over the spring and summer when I wasn't able to go to the print workshop at Morley College, I made some lino cut prints without a press. They are based on drawings I had done previously of dancers at Sadlers Wells, where I watched an amazing show choreographed by William Forsythe a couple of years ago. As I wasn't able to print on a press, I played around with texture, a serendipitious discovery! Here are some of my prints.
