What’s in the Message?

Charles Mathews

When I do art projects I tend to try and relay a message within my artwork. I do this for the most part because I’m usually a quiet person and often don’t connect with people about my feelings. I usually gravitate towards political artwork because there is a lot of things I learned as a adult about my culture I wish I knew before. Conceptually I tend to like political artist with backgrounds similar to me. One thing that I wish I could do more as a artist is put more effort into learning about the artist who I think share a connection with me. I want to learn about artist who are in my range of style like printmaking and artist who share my subject matter. I’ve found three new artist I’m learning about and want to research their topic and method of work.
First I really have grew interest in the artist Sandile Goje whom I can’t find a image on. Goje is a South African artist who uses relief printing for his art. Goje in his prints seemed to be about the intermingling of white and black Africans in South Cape. Or possibly the prints tells of modernism brought into the town. Technically the markings on Goje prints are outstanding as the only colors used are black and white. Two colors accomplish so much on the page like depth and line weight. I look further in to learning more about Sandile Goje.
The second artist I want to talk about is Amos P Kennedy. Amos is a African American poster and letterpress artist who I came to like. Amos work consist of phrases, proverbs and sayings. Amos uses post and posters from handset wood and metal type for his work which is then hand pressed. The posters are very colorful and sends a bright and clear message. I often try to do something of similar topic and when I see Amos prints I get inspired again. Amos method of overly printing text is a method I want to use someday in letterpress because it looks very promotional. The reason why I like this type of  Printmaking is because you can do multiple prints and put them up all over your local area.
Lastly another artist that got my attention is Daniel Pressely from South Carolina. Coming from a tragic background Pressely art in contrast depicts people singing and dancing. His work consist of wood carving and painting. However looking at his carving I can only imagine what they would look like if printing onto a book or print. His work is fascinating and beautiful and leaves me with a impression of learning how to be more detailed in my work. His composition is something I should sought after also as I believe that something I neglect in my work.

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Sandile Goje above












<Amos P Kennedy



below
​Daniel Pressley.

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