Hi, my name is John Pedder and I’m an artist currently specialising in woodcut printmaking.
I was a bit of a late bloomer when it comes to block printing. It was only about eight years ago that I made the connection between my drawing from the year dot and woodworking that came a couple of years later. But it was a jolting eureka moment despite me being quite slow on the uptake.
My style I suppose could be described as primitive but that’s probably because I’m constantly searching for an honest mark and sophistication tends to mask that, so it’s a constant battle to not allow developing skills to become the reason to make art. My themes tend to be to do with the search for the good in people. I’m always looking for the funny side of things as humour can be such a powerful vehicle even when trying to deal with serious issues.
I’d been into the ‘Printed By Us’ shop in Orchard Square a few times and was inspired by the idea of teaching skills to people who had experienced homelessness to get them out of challenging situations. I had been experimenting with hand printed tee shirts myself but wanted to have some screen printed tees made as the demand had grown. ‘Printed By Us’ are of course connected to the wonderful homelessness charity ‘Archer Project’ but with me not being a charity I needed the shirts to be commercially competitive in both price and quality, I have never been more than happy with both. Up to now I’ve had ‘Laughter Lines’ tees in black and red, ‘Misfit’ tees, ‘Lester The Wolf’ tees printed for my own shop. I’ve also had my ‘Buffers Girls’ design sold on t-shirts at Printed by Us! All brilliantly printed on fantastic organic cotton tee shirts.
Art has always had a two pronged role in social causes for me. On the one hand it offers the therapeutic ability to take somebody away from their problems by filling them with the good forces of creativity, and on the other hand it can produce the most arresting visuals to help promote social issues.
My practice is constantly moving and apart from two new projects that will deal with endangered species and human identity, I’m really looking forward to taking part in a huge celebration of printmaking for an national exhibition later this year featuring some mind blowing greats from the past, alongside brilliant modern practitioners.
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