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My blog is written for people interested in looking inside a practising artist's daily life. I document everything about my own process, while also turning outwards to talk to my fellow artists about what they are making.

Why a blog? Because I am an artist who writes. My visual art takes half-remembered moments from a childhood in an English mining town which I turn into books, prints and installations. I also love art and writing about other people's art, so this blog is an expression of that.

Why the funny blog name?

I chose the title 'Praeterita' in homage to John Ruskin's book. Ruskin was an artist and a writer on art who wrote passionately in defense of J.M.W. Turner, and then the Pre-Raphaelite painters such as John Everett Millais, at moments when none of these painters was fashionable. Ruskin was a complicated man, and 'Praeterita', written towards the end of his life, reflects this: not quite an autobiography, not quite a manifesto, it looks back on his past and tries to document the significant experiences that produced his personality.

So this blog documents my own artistic personality through the things that interest me: the past, my own artistic processes, word and image, and the art of my contemporaries, living and dead.

About me

I was born in a mining town in the north of England. My father was a soldier in the British army, who was killed on active duty when I was five. My mother, brother and I then moved into my grandparents' house. He was still a working miner, and we all lived in a house with no bathroom and just one tap. Memories from that world -- miners, coal, birds, buildings, fields, factories -- turn into images from which I have made books, prints, installations, and now paintings.

I studied for a BA in English and American literature at Cambridge University, and received my MA in Fine Art from Winchester College of Art, which is about 70 miles south-west of London.

I've lived in Paris, Barcelona, Dusseldorf, Madrid, London, and Chicago. Currently I live in Tucson, Arizona, in the remote southwestern United States. I am also married to a writer, so the entwining of the word and the image continues in and out of the studio. To contact me, send an email to philipanthonyhartigan@gmail.com.

Popular posts from this blog

Restoring my Printing Press

I've just finished restoring and assembling my large etching press -- a six week process involving lots of rust removal, scrubbing with steel wool, and repainting. Here is a photo of the same kind of press from the Chicago Printmakers Collaborative: And here is a short YouTube video of me testing the press, making sure the motor still works after nearly seven years of lying in storage:

Brancusi in Plastic

Artist Mary Ellen Croteau is showing these columns made from recycled plastic cartons and lids in the window of the Columbia College bookstore on Michigan Avenue. They are a playful homage to Brancusi's "Endless Columns", with a serious environmental message for our times: Image copyright Inhabitat.com and Mary Ellen Croteau Mary Ellen also runs a wonderful experimental art gallery in a window space in west Chicago, called Art on Armitage . I will be exhibiting a mixed media piece there during August 2012.

How to etch a linoleum block

Linoleum as a material for printmaking has been used for nearly a hundred years now. Normally, you cut an image out using special gouges similar to woodcut tools, cutting away the lino around the image you want to print. This is called relief printmaking, because if you look at the block from the side, the material that remains stands up in relief from the backing material. You then roll ink with a brayer over the surface of the block, place paper over it, and either print by hand or run it through a press. You can do complex things this way (for example, reduction linocuts), but the beauty of the process is that it is quick, simple, and direct. Incised lino block, from me.redith.com Etched lino block, from Steve Edwards A few years ago, I saw some prints that were classified as coming from etched linoleum blocks, and I loved the textures I saw in them. In the last few months, I've been trying to use this technique in my own studio, learning about it as one does these d