Chris Long

Chris Long is a fine art printmaker and award-winning composer based in Leamington Spa, UK. He graduated from the University of Liverpool with a first class degree in Fine Art and Music, gained a Masters degree in Composition from the University of Newcastle, and more recenlty a PhD from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Chris is a published composer and a British Composer Award winner, and whilst he pursued musical activities his visual work took a backseat. Over the last 2 years Chris has started establishing an online presence as a printmaker and selling his work through Etsy, and more recently through his own e-commerce site. “The move into selling online has been a learning curve but hugely motivating. If only it had been so easy to get your work out there when I graduated,” says the printmaker.

Chris works mainly with intaglio collagraph and relief techniques, sometimes combining the two. His work comes from a process of making and experimentation. The making of the printing plate, and the technical process of printing are integral to the development of the final image. Chris works quickly on new ideas; overlapping, rotating, and repeating, usually working with wet ink on top of wet. His ideas often come from the idea of a process, from new ways of rotating or over lapping plates, new ways of making marks, or combining inks and colours. He uses a mixture of relief and etching traditional and safe wash inks by Cranfield. His printing press, named ‘Bessie’, is a Major-George A2 etching press; “My press was a game changer and it allow me to explore a variety of techniques.” 

“My relief prints explore how a block can be reused, rotated, overlapped. It is a very musical approach. My work has always looked at developing motifs. Whilst the subject matter of my current relief prints may be simple text and the prints may be immediate and accessible, my process creates a layer of abstraction in how the layers overlap and how some layers of ink ‘stop’ the metallics to create two tone effects.” 

Some of Chris’ prints are abstract, others may contain text or recognisable motifs. He works within an area that borders on representation and abstraction, between rigidity and emotion, with the intention of giving differing levels of visual experience that come with repeated reflective viewing.

Most of Chris’ time is now spent developing his collagraph techniques; “The technique really speaks to me. The resulting prints are usually so much more than the plate suggests, images truly a result of a technique. There is a balance between representation and abstraction. My natural instinct is to create abstract works but I have a real draw towards landscape, or at least, suggestions of ‘place’ and ‘atmosphere’.”

www.chrislongprints.com
@chrislong_prints

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