The Coigach Prints

I recreate and draw on the ongoing processes and forces that transform our environment, both natural and human-made, over time. I integrate this practice, myself, and my personal psychology with that environment and resulting work. It is performative and psycho-navigational: a way of finding my location and direction; my means of survival.

Continuing my search for somewhere to be, I came upon strange and beautiful mountains and coastlines in Coigach and Assynt, North-West Scotland. They have been drawing me back for a number of years and are central to my current work, for which I immerse myself in these timeless places where nature's processes are more apparent.

The work is hand drawn into grounded copper etching plates entirely on location over days; projects sometimes span years, of exploring and revisiting. I work with intense, obsessional focus and detail: while observing surface features such as rocks, vegetation and water, physically I am affected by the changing weather conditions; this experience of location is filtered and distilled into drawn marks on the plate. These marks reflect my experiences of the land on both a microscopic and macroscopic level, and my observations of the relationship between the two in the erosive processes at work on earth. When I hold a drawing needle in my hand and connect with the surface of the etching plate, I find my location.

As well as incorporating drawing, some of the work uses photographic acid etching processes on copper plates. Through the actual sea submersion of these plates on location, I am exposing the plates and the images they carry to erosion, attrition and corrasion; this erases and replaces photographic and drawn images of the Coigach coastline - itself in an ongoing state of change. The ritual of putting etching plates in rough seas, whilst being an exhilarating act, is also one of risk, carrying a real possibility of loss or even transmutation...

The acid etching process seems to compress time. The works are often ongoing: though suspended for periods of time and for printing, they are not permanently arrested in their capacity for further transformation.

The action of the sea affects both sides of the plate, as does working outside. It is an immersive experience involving the whole plate. My approach to printing can place an impression taken from both sides of the plate into a single image. Working this way with the plate as a multidimensional object suggests an effectively transparent plate in the printing.

Self-integration with environments over time, drawing, taking photographs, and the erosive processes I use, together produce artefacts and artworks that consider the meaning of an individual's actions and their finite time and space, within the vastness of existence.

Brian D Hodgson
April 2023

My practice involves making physical and mental journeys towards 'edges' found in terrain I actively seek out or find myself in.

I have also often found that accidental occurrences can carry personal meaning for me: they are significant events.

DARK SNOW uses a photograph made at a point of exhaustion, late on the second day of a Cuillin Ridge mountain traverse on the Isle of Skye. The misty outcrop of the Basteir Tooth was bypassed round its base and left unclimbed by me on that occasion.

The image was later unexpectedly invaded by a ghostly interference from a malfunctioning exposure unit in a darkroom in South London; this manifestation - an imperfect 'evaporation' - was welcomed in recognition of the beauty and potential in failure and dysfunction.

23 Days of Absorption was drawn into a grounded etching plate entirely on location in Snowdonia. Over a year I journeyed from London to sit on a rocky ledge. This precipice was attainable via a gully scramble, 100 metres below a summit, clinging to a cascade of mountainside. A precarious place to be, perched over air, 'cold hand drawing' and wet to the skin.

Visiting a place on the Northumberland coastline over twelve days, I used its unique effects of geology and sound to focus, think and draw the experience on a grounded etching plate. Sitting in this tide-filled rock amphitheatre, looking through a tunnel channelling the sea in and out, I tried to work out my psychological location.

As I was drawing, a second etching plate lay chained to a rock in the tunnel, under the sea, for one summer full moon tide.

Integrating the Sea Plate and the Drawn Plate during printing sets up a dialogue between the two plates; this forms a bridge, allowing a discourse between myself and the sea.

Using photopolymer intaglio plates, I then introduce a photographic element moving through the drawing, like my final act of swimming through the channel to the open sea, entering the image, and thereby finding my location.

Please see also the video CHANGING CHANNELS - Enter the Image on the Actions page.

© Brian D Hodgson