In the bath

Fall 1987

In mid 1987 I tried to get myself together and get something done, but could come up with nothing better than this.

It's actually not a bad conception - looking in through the window of a bath house at a woman getting into the bath (that yellow strip was supposed to be the window frame ...), but it is so clumsily done that it's hard to believe I carried it through as far as actually bothering to print a couple of copies.

It was obviously time for a re-think about what I was trying to do. I had known all along that I am simply not the 'artist' type - no desire to fill sheets of paper with my sketches, and nothing to communicate in a visual form. (Have you noticed a common feature to all my 'original' prints of these years - all of women, and not one of them with a visible face!)

Here was a non-artist, but a guy who still wanted to be a printmaker. Why? Simply he likes cutting wood and printing paper! The way forward? Still completely unclear. But at this point, it was obviously time for another ukiyo-e reproduction ...