Paul Furneaux
.jpg "Echo I, 2009. Photography by Chris Park")
Whilst on a short residency in Norway in 2007, I was looking at plastic/ polystyrene containers as a means of support for my Japanese woodblock prints, printed on strong handmade Japanese paper.
I moved on to using oval box lids and found objects and creating my own shapes for supports to wrap my prints around. In some cases the supports have become integral to the finished work, often having inherent beauty in themselves and having developed into surfaces on which to make further marks with pencil or brush, making these unique works rather than an edition of multiples.
This simple but decisive shift to find new forms to wrap my woodblock prints around opened up a new conceptual area for me. In 2009 with the support both from Visual Arts Awards: Edinburgh and the Micro Residency programme at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop I was able to find the time and technical assistance to experiment with making some of these adapted or ‘found’ forms bigger and to the specifications which I wanted. 'Echo I' was the first big piece I made translating found objects which I had wrapped in a similar way.
Paul Furneaux studied at Edinburgh College of Art from 1982 to 1987, and the Tama Art University, Tokyo, completing a Masters in Japanese Woodblock Printing from 1996 to 2000. As well as exhibiting nationally and internationally, he teaches Japanese watercolour woodblock printing (Mokuhanga).
www.paulfurneaux.com