“COWS, CRANES and CUT-OUTS”.  The works shown are drawings & mixed print media. 

The starting point for Alexine Good’s work is always a drawing, pencil or pen & ink that is subsequently developed further using a combination of  screen-printing, mono-printing, gelli-plate printing, etchings and collage. 

Why Cranes and cows?
I’m fascinated by the social behaviour interactions  of animals and birds and am always delighted when I feel I have got close to representing the sense of communality that I always sense when walking past a field of cows quietly chewing the cud together or seeing a great sedge of cranes flying overhead. 

It seems particularly important to capture these images in our slightly frazzled and disconnected  times.

The three workshops that accompany the exhibition are run directly by Alexine Good, who has come from Berlin, and who will be in residence from the 8th to the 14th of Sepember 2024. Individual places can be booked directly through Galleri Blæst – For the Joy of Art.

Artist statement. Alexine Good: Screenprints 

Why cows? They seem to embody a slow, patient sense of contentment, curiosity and gentleness that feels refreshing in our fast, less innocent world.  I have been a contented city dweller for the last three decades, living in London, then moving in 1996 to Berlin;  but while recently attending a series of silent retreats in the Allgäu, I found myself returning to the themes of my rural childhood and agricultural studies and began working on a series of drawings of the indigenous grey/brown cows whose pastures bordered the cloister garden.

Why screenprinting? There is nothing quite like  pulling off a new print, never knowing quite what to expect… 

It gives me the same buzz now as it ever did…….  simply magic. 

The process: A sketchbook drawing that I am satisfied with is used as a basis for a series of screen prints, whereby the drawn line, transposed onto the screen, is printed in combination with various layers of colour to create a dynamic but harmonious whole.

I could play forever with the various combinations of colour and line, positive/negative forms, scale, transparency, ….

Why drawing?  Drawing is my way of connecting with my environment.  I have kept sketchbooks as a visual diary for over thirty years…. an eclectic mixture of self-portraits, tins of brushes, buildings, shoes, fruit bowls, flowers, family, pets, …. it’s all there.  When I’m drawing everything has a logic to it. It centers me.

What is a good drawing?  For me, a successful drawing is about the reduction of the subject matter, through a series of increasingly rapid sketches, to the bare essentials,  while retaining its unique character and energy. A brilliant art teacher of mine once said that a really good drawing is like the Holy Trinity, a combination of three things;  you, the subject matter, and the magic that happens somewhere between the two, with neither of the first two components playing too dominant a role.