Squeak Carnwath

Philosophy , 2010

 
12 x 10.5 x 1 in

Artist's book: double-sided prints, portfolio, leather satchel portfolio - 12 x 10.5 x 1; prints - 11 x 10 x 0.125 Edition of 20

Inspired by a suggestion from her colleague Jo Whaley, Squeak Carnwath's Philosophy collects some of the artist's most piquant and personal work in a format which takes the reader behind the scenes of her celebrated paintings. Philosophy is an artist's book which doubles as a "facsimile archive," as Carnwath puts it, of the studio artifacts which accumulate as she works on her trademark oil and alkyd canvases. Carnwath refers to these artifacts – the loose sheets bearing notes, drawings, color tests, quotations, and various other bits of information – as "the crazy papers." Working with Donald Farnsworth in late 2009 and early 2010, the artist scanned dozens of the crazy papers, as well as passages from small paintings and from her "studio books" – lined ledgers into which she tapes clippings – combining and rearranging elements from all three sources to compose the 40 images in Philosophy.

While Carnwath still proudly calls painting "the queen of the arts" and drolly suggests that the crazy papers are "the little workers – [they're] the hive, and painting is the queen," Philosophy celebrates these intimate compositions as art objects in their own right. At the same time, the book offers an unprecedented encounter with Carnwath's process, acting as a kind of concordance to the canvases: "The crazy papers," she says, "are the diaries of the paintings. When I'm painting, I think of something, or I talk about a color I want to put down, or what I want to do the next day... They lead me into things I can do in the paintings. Then they kind of marry together so you don't know which came first. "

Philosophy's pages were printed using a flatbed acrylic printer on paper textured with hand-brushed marble dust and gesso; the printed imagery was registered so as to align with the textures with uncanny precision. Carnwath happily describes viewers' astonishment when she reveals that the lined notebook paper is actually made of modeling paste and pigment, and that lines apparently scrawled in pencil are in fact printed in acrylic ink. Farnsworth developed the process with printer Tallulah Terryll: "we've sculpted these pieces," he says, "to be true to Squeak's mark." In a letter to poet John Yau, Farnsworth wrote of the book, "We are moving into strange and dangerous territory – printmaking that may raise some eyebrows... making textures that were, before this, the private playground of painting and sculpture."

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