How the light gets in

One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to try a few more "creative" things this year. So here is my first attempt at lino printing since High School.

It was inspired by Leonard Cohen’s line "there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in" and 2 Corinthians 4: 7-10 (and the friend who connected the two). And of course, most of you will recognise that it was also strongly inspired by Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, even down to the crack in the wall, which was perfect.

I wanted it to be in relief like this so that it was the hands reaching out in the dark (because often that's when we rely more on God, and we learn more of God), not to mention the light coming in through the crack in the wall. There were other things I was going to add, which might have made it more original, but in the end I liked it like this, and the whole thing was a lino printing learning experiment.

Clearly I need to work on my technique, because this is a very long way from perfect. But as Leonard Cohen said in the previous line "forget your perfect offering (there is a crack in everything ...)" so here it is, imperfections and all.

How the light got into the print is what I really want to know though. I didn’t know whether to drop the lino cut onto the paper, or drop the paper onto the lino. I still don’t know. But I am going to google and keep working on it.