John Bellany

John Bellany  (1942-2013) was a Scottish painter. Here I am going to look at some of his prints.  When I was doing the research on the work that he has done there weren’t a lot of prints but there were a lot of paintings.  I think he was probably better known as a painter rather than a printmaker.

I had a look at his prints and I can’t say I find them attractive.  I came across a lot of etches and I have chosen this one titled ‘Only Time Will Tell’. I noticed that the lines are well defined and the overall image is very dark.  When I looked at other pieces of his work they didn’t have this darkness. I presume that he hasn’t rubbed off all the ink on the plate and that he may have done this on purpose to give an effect of darkness which I like very much.

I find it hard to figure out exactly what he has etched.  Looks like a man’s head with a bird’s large beak and the upper body looks like a snake.  I researched about this and I found out that when he did this piece of work he was going through a bad time in his life.  This came about due to his second wife’s battle with depression and John Bellany turned to drink.