The Toast Series -

"Toast #7"
monotype by Mick Mather

As promised, here's one of the monotype prints from The Toast Series. As you may recall, this came about as a direct result of The Telephone Series - another example of which can be seen here at No Mather What Shape - The Archive. Basically, each telephone began as a shape that looked like a piece of bread and, after finishing all 26 telephones, I began to fiddle. Soon the layers began looking more like slices of toasted bread and a series was born! Once again, each image is iconic in nature - the toast posted here being the most stylized. They were fun to do but, since I continued using telephone book pages for the most part, I'm dissatisfied with them. There's another grouping of experimental, trial runs done on a variety of other papers that I was even less satisfied with and I may revisit these somewhere down the road. More to come ... eventually.

You asked for it ... again -

- click to view larger image -

"Telephone # 20"
monotype by Mick Mather

I know that I promised to show at least one of the images from this series of monotypes. I'll likely show a few more since listening to something that my friend, Lisa Sarsfield, had to say in a comment recently. To briefly recap, my thinking was that these were not quite there as regards perspective and, for me, even the composition feels a bit forced. I've since changed my mind a bit because of the iconic nature of this series, The TV Dinner Series and The Toast Series yet to be shown. As before, stay tuned. :)

You asked for it -

"Thumbs from The Telephone Series"

monotype prints by Mick Mather

Just a small peek at another series of monotypes. I don't like the way these turned out and I'd do them differently if I had the time to pursue the project. As with The TV Dinner Series these were created using inexpensive tempera paints. Each telephone was painted on a plastic sheet and then transferred to a page from the telephone book. Each image was accomplished in alphabetical order and corresponds to a telephone directory booklet page where each monotype was tipped in (the little black letter tabs can be seen in each of the thumbnails above). One good thing that came out of this work is a second series that immediately followed. It's called The Toast Series and I'll show a few of those in the days or weeks ahead.