Helios

Helios delineated / night and day / first state CV1 is a limited edition archival pigment print on Hahnemühle 305gsm 100% cotton fine art paper.
From an edition of 24, plus 4 APs


Mounted behind  AR70 glass and fitted with a wooden tray frame
 
I started drawing Helios at the back end of September 2025, so in essence it’s been a two month process to complete the drawing and edition the prints, much of that time spent hunched over a lightbox, 2H pencil in hand.
 
 
Helios follows on from my Balla series, as an attempt to discover what it would feel like to slow down, and spend day after day quietly drawing a process led composition in graphite, pencil on paper. Does that equation of time spent for material gained seem worthwhile, does the balance seem right in the moment and after the event. I’m still processing that thought.

 
 
Each part of the geometry has been drawn three times, and those modular components have then been scanned, and composited digitally. Weeks and weeks of drawing the multi-layered parts. For the longest time I’ve been interested in the idea of making work that has taken a lot of labour to make; labour that can be both cyclical, meditative and perhaps in some way restorative too. Art as mindfulness perhaps. There are myriad problems with all of this, but nevertheless, I wanted to set about making a big drawing and see it through from the first mark to the final edit.
 
I’m calling this edition the first state, a print term, as I now have a huge (20,000 pixel high) modular drawing that I can remix and re edit in any number of ways, almost certainly by overlaying new forms to dramatically add to the original composition in ways that I hope will emerge creatively as the drawing progresses day by day.
 
 
The genesis for this way of working comes from a multitude of strands that I’ve pulled together for this study. I think that may be the first time I’ve written that phrase, and realise that it comes from a relationship I have with a psychotherapist who will often tell me that he’s going to pull a few strands together for me. So be it.
 
 
In this case the strands would include a beautiful woodcut block print by Chuck Close, one of his sublime portraits, that can use over 100 colours inked across more than 20 blocks, to create final prints of rare beauty. The printmaker Close works with claims to have taken five years to complete a single work, and when questioned by Close about changing elements of the print, rebuked him by saying that he had spent significantly more time with the artwork than Close had when he painted the original, and as such wasn’t going to be taking any advice on changing the print!

 
I can’t think of many situations in which a person spends more time with an artwork than the original artist has, so it’s a lovely idea to my mind, that that could ever happen. Of course to some extent a piece framed for the wall may spend more time in the eye of its collector than it did in the eye of the artist, but that is at a different level of intensity from the study required to translate from one media to another, paint to print.