Julian Meredith

March 2006-June 2006

Julian the artist selected by representatives of the community and harbour users in Helmsdale has started his residency which includes a commission for a piece of work to be sited in the area of the harbour.

Julian creates mostly large pieces by cutting fish, whales. animals, birds into large planks of elm and taking prints from the cut wood, using fine paper, inks he mixes himself and finally making the print by using the back of a spoon to create the final image. The final rubbing can often take six to eight hours.

Julian will be working in the school and in the old schoolroom at Kildonan. If you would like to speak to Julian about his work or see him at work then please contact Meg Telfer on 01641 521845 or e-mail megtelfer@tiscali.co.uk

Extract from an interview with Julian Meredith, Christine Watkins 2005

I have always had a deep respect for people who live and work in close connection with the natural world. For me, the person who can tell the difference between a jackdaw and a rook knows something real and important – and something that’s of more value to the aspiring artist than much that is taught in art colleges. My own work is an extension of my practical knowledge of aspects of the wild, and developed alongside it.

My use of elm to make prints has grown from a preoccupation that started about twenty years ago, with the disappearance of elm trees from hedges, and from the landscape. At that time I was making small woodcuts, and decided to collect as much elm wood as I could. I gathered branches from dead elms and began making constructions, twenty feet or so across, and increasingly large prints. The printmaking process impregnates the wood with pigment and paraffin, giving it an almost fossil-like quality – I’ve got a growing graveyard of fossilized elm planks.

The prints that I take from the blocks have a light, airy quality, the opposite to the nature of the wood itself. As the printed paper comes off the block it’s a bit like the spirit of the fossilized wood. The use of the blue colour also helps to transform the earthiness of the wood, via the flow of the grain, into something more akin to water and air. Both the dark, fossilized block and the light print are an equal part of making the work, and it’s a pity that it’s not usually possible to exhibit both.

I’m particularly influenced by the way in which animal forms are represented in aboriginal work. It was a breakthrough when I started showing whales and fish from above, instead of from the side, as this gave my work the relevance and directness I had been reaching towards. The concerns of people are reflected in my work, although in an indirect way, because the fertility of the land and of the sea has always been the concern of human beings. If the land and sea are fertile then things are basically OK, if not then people start to feel agitated.

Fish images are somehow hard-wired into my brain – they are genetically imprinted if that’s possible.