Michael Gage

Last night, I answered a knock on the burrow door. There was Naughty Kitten and his friends, singing carols.



Merry Christmas everyone!

After several weeks struggling to produce some new prints, I've finally done something that's starting to go in the right direction. It's a two-stage reduction linocut, 16 x 16cm (each square is about 5cm).







First, I cut away the areas from the lino-block that I wanted to stay white, and then printed it in red. Then I cut away the areas that I want to stay red, and print that in black, on top of the red.

The image itself combines the influences of lots of things that I have been looking at recently (though the effect of the influences is quite diluted by the time they reach the paper):

-- the "Revolution on Paper" exhibition of Mexican prints at the British Museum

-- (deceptively) simple linocuts by Robert Taverner and Christopher Brown

-- the Warhol room at the Tate's Pop Life exhibition which had a wall of his celebrity portraits

-- and even the way we hung my paintings in groups of four and nine at a recent exhibition.

I made a big jug of custard to go with the pudding that Clarissa made yesterday.

Clarissa has been busy in the kitchen making Christmas pudding!

This morning, we opened the first door on our Advent calendar.


And we found a rabbit dancing in the snow!