Finding Blake welcomes Yana Trevail, an artist preoccupied with interconnectedness. Last November — at the Blake Society’s evening entertainments in honour of Blake’s birthday — Yana gave a talk on recent artwork she’d produced. Here is her presentation, as part of a lively occasion of art, poetry, music, drama, wit and dancing held in a pub off the Strand.
I’m a painter and a printmaker and my work generally at the moment is concerned with the interconnectedness of all things and I’m particularly interested in expressions of energy.
My connection with Blake is rather tenuous in a way. My husband joined the Blake Society about a year ago. He has a very deep interest in Blake. So I’ve been along to various Blake meetings and events. I particularly enjoyed going along to the Cardozo Kindersley workshop to see the stone that was created for Blake and subsequently I went to the very moving event of the unveiling of the stone at Bunhill Fields in August. I didn’t think that I was particularly interested in Blake, although there were certain things that I was drawn to. I found the event very moving event, though I wasn’t inspired to do anything about it until my husband expressed to me his feelings about his experience, which also moved me very much. So that, coupled with the fact that I’d been there, actually prompted me to create an etching.
A minute’s silence
This piece of work is an aquatint (a tonal variety of acid etching). I don’t like to talk too much in depth about what I produce; I would hope that people are able to respond in a more visceral, less intellectual way, without verbal prompts to what is a purely visual artwork. However, what I would say about this is that it is a very direct representation of the energy that my husband experienced and that I also experienced at the unveiling. It was entirely intuitive how I came to make this piece of work, as quite a bit of my work is now. This is how I expressed that very moving time and I feel it expresses entirely what I’m interested in: expressions of energy and all of us and the universe. So I’m just pleased to be able to share with you what I and my husband and probably many more of you experienced, in different ways perhaps, at that event.
Interconnectedness
But this led on to other snippets I’d heard from my husband; for example, the ‘four zoas’. So although I can’t claim to know very much about the zoas I do have a certain understanding of them. This is a very intuitively produced aquatint etching. It came from my own experience which I had whilst doing some yoga overlooking the sea near Plymouth.
I live on the edge of Dartmoor and feel I have a very strong connection with nature. I spend a lot of time on the moor, running and cycling and swimming. It’s what nourishes my soul and keeps me sane. So this print can be regarded as representing spontaneous intuition and imagination and therefore can be connected to Blake’s zoa of Urthona. I don’t plan any of my work. It comes into me; I’m like a conduit. Years of experience of course; nothing comes of nothing.
Manifestations
This is a study for a much larger plate that I’m working on at the moment. It’s a two-plate print; one plate is an aquatint and the other plate has a grid etched on it. So I had to put the paper through the press twice with the two different plates.
This image is rather evil, I think, in a way; and also a rather sad image. It’s provisionally titled ‘Urizen’. That is how I see the manifestation of Blake’s mind-forged manacles we are prone to, due to our overactive left brains. The grid is an expression of that rigidity.
The etching also reminds me of that awful image in Abu Ghraib, of that Iraqi prisoner standing on a box. That notion came to me after I’d made the etching; so that’s not what it’s about. Various things feed into the work: it’s very cross-referential. But that idea of being totally tied up, of being a prisoner, trapped in the world of the left brain, is essentially what this is about.
Previously I had said to my husband, “No I’m not interested in Blake, but I’ll go along to some of the meetings when we’re in London.” So from not having had any particular interest in Blake, subsequently I found I’d created these aquatints which are very directly concerned with him. I’m glad to have been able to share my work with you.
Notes
Yana Trevail is a painter, printmaker and performer preoccupied with the interconnectedness of all things and, through the exploration of internal and external topographical themes, developing idiosyncratic expressions of energy.
Yana won the Chairman’s Prize in 2000 and the Meynell Fenton Prize in 2002 at the Discerning Eye Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London for which she was also an Invited Artist in 2003 and 2008.
Her work has been selected for numerous exhibitions including the BP Portrait Awards, National Portrait Gallery; The Hunting Art Prizes, Royal College of Art and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. Her work is in many private collections in the UK and internationally.
In 1975 she met the painter Robert Lenkiewicz with whom she studied and sat for. She was his studio assistant from 1997 until his death in 2002. She lives and works on Dartmoor and you can find more of her work at yanatrevail.co.uk.
You can read about the ceremony for William Blake’s new gravestone at Bunhill Fields in our post, The Unveiling — and see Finding Blake film footage of the event by James Murray-White: Apocalypse — Unveiling the Stone.
Thank you for sharing these, Yana. I particularly like “A minute’s silence for William Blake”, which is very beautiful.