Artist
Brian Voce
An Inquisitive Artist
Brian Voce is an abstract printmaker, painter, and educator. Embracing all forms of printmaking equally his prints are produced using hand or laser cut plates, via hand stamped blocks, as risograph prints, or digitally as Giclée prints. As a painter he works predominantly with oils or acrylics. He was originally trained in Wood Metal Ceramics and Plastics at Brighton Polytechnic. There he used the opportunity to develop a series of sculptural mixed media floor pieces in wood and ceramics. After leaving Brighton he continued to develop his work both 2 and 3 dimensionally but now mostly works in 2D, with paint, print and encaustic mixed media.
Selected Work
About Brian Voce
Whilst passionate about maintaining his practice, through his active participation in arts education Brian has consistently worked to encourage other to find and develop their own creativity. He has worked with community arts groups, offenders in prisons, special needs students, schools, college, and undergraduate students. In the summer of 2024 he gave up his full time post as a Senior Lecturer at The University of Lincoln, School of Design, to focus on his practice, and on developing arts workshops.
Process and practice:
A great believer in maintaining a curious, questioning and open mind, he embraces all forms of inspiration equally; wherever the source comes from… Things experienced, seen, read and heard, maps, grids, archaeology, science, the environment and natural processes, and his instinctive responses to the medium itself. Whatever form the inspiration initially takes, the starting point for all work begins as a series of sketches. Ideas may be explored traditionally on paper or digitally where the computer allows him to work quickly and precisely on manipulating ideas and complex patterns. When a piece of work finally does come together, describing this as ‘a real emotional high’ he states that ‘inevitably, it’s never quite what was initially intended as at some point the work always takes on a life of its own’. From there he proceeds intuitively and expressively letting the ‘needs of the work’ dictate the eventual outcome. His paintings are abstract, structured, geometrically based but often incorporating uncontrolled elements such as runs and bleeds where serendipitous interactions within the medium shape the final result. As a piece develops the underlying structure is often progressively obscured by these more erratic elements. It’s this unpredictability he also likes with printmaking (particularly with collagraphs, riso and stamp printing where each print is different and serendipitous accidents can and do happen). This philosophy underscores the dynamic relationship he establishes between his vision and the inherent qualities of his materials. Quote, “I’m responding to the pleasure (and sometimes frustrations) of the medium.” For him there are always avenues left unexplored and these inevitably lead to the development of alternative solutions and/or new directions.
Recent work has explored issues concerned with genetic modification, and the chance production of new chimeras. This theme has been explored through a series of abstract artworks featuring ‘manipulated’ geometries. These take the circle as a trope (which he sees as a metaphor for the ‘perfect’ seed, a genetically engineered ‘Pandora’s Box’). Through manipulating simple geometric systems based on circular repeats he produced complex and unexpected visual outcomes, that through alignments of overlapping geometries, created images evocative of ‘new and imagined’ flora and fauna.
Currently he is developing a new direction, exploring relationships between simple geometric shapes, their ‘family groups’ their interactions, examining how they interact through colour, placement, overlap, repetition, and degradation. Similar shapes are a common ‘visual language’ found universally across cultures, as clan symbols (for example as the Mon in Japanese culture), on medieval European heraldry and ecclesiastical architecture, and in contemporary design as branding. Begun initially as stamped prints, he intends these to form the basis for further painted and animated work. His diverse creative experiences and pedagogical background having laid the groundwork for the interdisciplinary approach that characterizes his current work.
Looking retrospectively the unifying theme across his work is the interplay between structured and chaotic systems, where chance and accident play pivotal roles in determining the outcome. Naturally one piece of work suggests another and so a body of work emerges as a series of iterations around an initial idea or theme. It’s only when looking over previous work that often deeper underlying motivations begin to become clearer to him. Reflecting on his artistic practice, he finds that working through ideas, making space for the subconscious to manifest itself in the work, and exploring the labyrinth of routes to an outcome is what makes the process interesting and exciting. He states, “If I knew what the answer was before I began, I’d be less interested in starting the journey.”
Publications.
Investigating and Making Prints and Ceramics at Key Stage 3. Brian Voce and Tim Bax. ISBN 1 86025 137 4
2022 Selected for Collect Art Magazine autumn edition. (Work selected for the magazine cover image).
2022 Selected for Artists Responding To… magazine October edition.
2022 Graphic Score ‘A Song for Nebulas’ selected and published by the Centre for Deep Listening, Day 111 A Year of Deep Listening.
2023 Featured artist Ink Magazine.
Exhibitions (Previous five years).
2018 Selected for ‘Our eARTh’ Kunsthuis Gallery, Crayke Yorkshire.
2019 ‘Print!!’ Project Space Plus the University of Lincoln.
2019 Selected for ‘Let’s Talk About the Anthropocene’ University of Brighton.
2020 Print Exchange 2020
2022 Selected for ‘Colour’ Fronteer Gallery Sheffield
2022 Selected for The FLUX Review Online Summer Exhibition.
2023 Google Arts and Culture. Echoes From The Dreamtime
2024 Unexpected Journeys. The Hub, National Centre for Craft and Design.
2024 Trim: Graphic Design Staff Show. Project Space Plus. University of Lincoln.
2024 Open Call Narrowly Exhibition Newark
2024 Selected for ‘Colour’ Open Gallery Wakefield
2024 Selected for The FLUX Review ‘Creative Souls’ Online Exhibition.
showcase your art on The flux Review