I'm Peter Wylie
I'm standing in Camberwell Print department
at Camberwell School of Art.
I'm on a 2nd year course of the Visual Arts Printing MA
spending most of my time doing etching
in the etching area.
I'm principally a painter and I wanted to have
something which made me think differently.
I wanted to carry on with the same subject I was working on
which was Modernist buildings and looking at that
but I wanted to take something which was very different
to kind of force me to rethink how I create images.
I think I also like the idea that printing is something that is multiple
you can create more of one of them
and they, therefore, become more accessible and cheaper for people to buy.
And I think the thing I like about printing
which I hadn't expected
is its sheer physicality
the materials you use are very old and long term
the flame
the acid
the wax.
The various ways of ways of making marks
the rosin and the box and all those kind of things
and also the fact that you have got something very physical in your hand
it's a piece of metal.
With printing, you can get a whole history of mark making
through the various stages you go through
and you acquire marks which you hadn't planned for.
So you have almost got a document of a whole journey
a beginning to an end of an image
with all the knocks and grazes and marks
that you get called foul bite.
One of the things I hadn't imagined
and I guess it occurred when I did the smoking of the plate
the kind of whole sense of the alchemy
the flame working on the wax etc
and the sealants and then thinking well this is something like...
it goes back a long time
and I am doing the very act that someone like Rembrandt,
Goya would have been doing all those years ago.
And it just puts me in a certain lineage and tradition
using the same tools
it hasn't changed that much
it's still quite rudimentary and fundamental in its nature.
And I find that quite exciting to be part of that
but already in a contemporary time with different issues happening on my mind
and that I want to respond to.