Pella On Saturdays, watercolour frontispiece

Pella On Saturdays, lithograph

Pella On Saturdays, lithograph

The transformations that a drawing goes through are passed over with regret in the knowledge that the quite good has to be sacrificed to the hope of the better, often in vain. The opportunity of working on a lithographic stone offered the chance of holding various stages in the form of prints while continuing on the same surface with the process of drawing.

Each available Saturday for a year (4th June 1980 to 6th June 1981) Nick Hunter would bring the stone with proofs of the previous week's drawing and I would spend two hours working from the model, brushing, crayoning or scraping on the top of the preceding image. A final 'right' version was not aimed at (though one such wouldn't have been unwelcome and we would have stopped there) and the prints are not stage proofs in the ordinary sense.

Of the complete set there are five copies, though the number of prints of each stage varies between five and ten. A single set is bound in this volume. I am struck when I look at the series how well it exemplifies the battle I have when drawing between boldness and fearfulness, like a set of breakings-out and self-imprisonings.