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John Sargeaunt

While training to be a teacher in the 1960s I studied art as my main subject and this included work with a number of printing techniques, such as screen and relief printing, as well as painting. During the 1970s, when teaching in special education, I produced many abstract paintings using very textural surfaces and in 1979 this development was recognized with a solo exhibition at one of the Southampton University's Galleries

Following this exhibition I again became very interested in printing and produced exploratory acid etchings, lithography and screen prints whilst attending a part time printing course at Southampton Art School. Many of my images at this time were generated from photography and the darkroom

However during the 70s I also became more and more involved with sailboat racing and navigated in top events such as the World One Ton Cup, the Formula One of sail racing in the 80s, as well as sailing in the disastrous Fastnet Race of 1979.

Due to this absorption with sailboat racing I produced very few paintings or prints for about 20 years. However, even though not making images, the sea and the sky were beginning to seep into my dormant imagery

In the 90s I was trying to get back into more consistent image making while traveling extensively throughout Europe for work. To help this process I studied the history of art with the Open University and ended up with a BA Honours Open degree. Whilst this did not create a significant increase in production it provided me with a much wider understanding of the potential of image making and the wide range of methods and forms of image making throughout history.

During the early 2000s I started to produce new prints when I joined the Saturday print courses run by Jan Bullas at the Bournemouth Arts Institute and due to Jan's strong influence at this time I am now firmly committed to image making once again. Today my production is strongly stimulated and helped by my active participation with Poole Printmakers where I find the support of other members essential to the development of my present printmaking practice. The variety of printing techniques available in the workshop have allowed me to translate images inside different disciplines, each with their specific potentials and limitations. Recently I have come back to photography and the digital darkroom and my images in this exhibition have been influenced by the techniques available in Photoshop allied to a Digital SRL camera transposed into manual etching for production.