Marigold Plunkett – winner of Pegasus Prize at Bath Society of Artists Summer Show
Every year Pegasus Art sponsors the Bath Society of Artists Summer Show – it’s quite simply one of our favourites! Exhibited in the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath, it’s a prestigious show that’s been running for over 100 years (117 to be exact). Even during World War 2 there was a show!
The Society was founded in 1904 with 26 members. It has grown over the years to a membership of around 120 diverse, talented artists. Many distinguished 20th-century painters have exhibited with the Society including Walter Sickert, Patrick Heron, Mary Fedden and Howard Hodgkin.
The Victoria Art Gallery is a wonderful building overlooking the Pultney Bridge (one of only four covered bridges in the world!) and the pretty weir. Every inch of wall space is hung with top quality art, print, photography and there is plenty of sculpture for sale too.
Sofa Endurance 1 – the winning entry
We were delighted to award emerging artist Marigold Plunkett with the Pegasus Prize, £100 worth of art materials, for ‘Sofa Endurance 1’ an etching which is part of a collection called the ‘Sofa Series’ created during lockdown. A very personal project that really kept Marigold on track during those tricky months, removed from her Masters degree at Camberwell College of Art.
Here she shares how the ‘Sofa Series’ came about
The Drypoint etching, Sofa Endurance I, which was lucky enough to have been selected for the Pegasus Art Prize. It is a part of a larger series of etchings, called the ‘Sofa Series’.
The series developed from sketchbook drawings of my family during Covid-19. Specifically from a period at the end of 2021 when my family and I actually came down with the virus. It was just as we had started to find some new “normal” in our lives. It made quarantine particularly challenging, not least because we were sick of the sight of our four walls.
I had kept a sketchbook religiously during the pandemic, in the midst of finishing an MA in Printmaking at Camberwell College of Arts when Covid struck. It felt like a brutal end to a fantastic experience and my sketchbook became a sort of sanctuary away from it all. It’s where the Sofa Series emerged from.
I look at this body of work as a creative documentation of the pandemic, marking a closing chapter to my MA and the whole experience. It is obviously a very personal documentation, but hopefully quite relatable to many families. The titles are all light-hearted because I wanted to juxtapose the seriousness of the situation-the fear and frustration-with an expression of the sense of unity and humour we also experience during the darkest of moments.
Art Materials of choice
These drypoint etchings were made using environment board, which is a very cheap and easy material to mark and scratch into. It is great for students and beginners. You can even peel the top plastic layer off to create a rough surface, which has an aquatint effect when inked up (where there’s darker areas on the print). The downside of drypoint board is you can’t make large editions because it starts to degrade quite quickly. But I personally like this, it makes each print feel more precious.
I used a prussian blue Akua ink, which is fantastic for drypoint and cleans up really easily as it is soya based. My favourite ink for intaglio etching is always Charbonnel, an oil based ink. You can’t beat its rich blackness, but for the drypoint etchings, Akua ink was ideal. They are printed on beautiful Somerset ‘soft white’ 300gsm paper, my favourite of all the printmaking papers because it’s so forgiving and strong.
