John Breakey

The Wall
Stone: Lithographic Crayon and Tusche
7 Runs
450mm x 600mm
2006

I live at the foot of the Mourne Mountains sweeping down to the sea in County Down, Northern Ireland. It is from these two elements that I find ideas for my paintings. I do not deal with a fixed point in time or viewpoint, more the accumulation of observations about the landscape or seascape.

I sometimes break the landscape down into smaller elements such as, the field, the wall, gorse, and running water. The seascapes I love to see will have moods of calmness, turbulence and changing colour.

All my lithographs are printed from stone. The image is worked out and a loose key drawing is then transferred to each stone in red chalk. The stones are laid out in a line. Moving up and down the line I work each stone up with drawing, working until all the stones contain the right balance of drawing. Only then do I process the stones.

I usually take up to fifteen or twenty trial proofs, changing the colour or the transparency slightly for each proof until I have all the prints done. From these I select which colours work the best, then I start printing the edition.

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