After christmas break, I managed to make my way back to Aberystwyth. Unfortunately, the uni is closed and doing online teaching which means I won't be able to get into the studios at the moment. However, my professors are letting me pick stones up from uni to work on at home. It means I won't be able to etch them myself but hopefully, I will get to print them.
Over christmas, I spent some time trying to come up with plenty of ideas for new prints and expand upon my work from last semester. For my next stone, I decided to do an image of a two headed pig in a pram. I got this idea from many roots. The main idea of doing a pig was partly from Alice by Jan Svankmajer which I've mentioned before. In Alice, theres a scene where a crying baby turns into a pig and thats always stuck with me. It is also kind of based on a nightmare I used to have as a child, where my mother would replace me with a gorilla and no amount of screaming or crying that it wasn't me would convince her otherwise. Originally I was just going to do a normal piglet but I recently read a poem called Two Headed Calf by Laura Gilpin which resonated with me. It goes:
Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.
But tonight he is alive and in the north field with his mother. It is a perfect summer evening: the moon rising over the orchard, the wind in the grass. And as he stares into the sky, there are twice as many stars as usual.
This is where I got the idea to use a two headed piglet. I also incorporated some figures in the background. The shadowy figures are starting to become more prevalent in my work. Since a lot of my work is based on my anxieties and fears, it makes sense that there are always these figures watching. I think they also add a sense of unease and create a little easter egg since you cant really see them unless you look for them.
Anyway, the finished piece is here. It will be interesting to see it once its been etched and proofed.
