Starting out as an online T-shirt designer in 2007, Scottish designer David Cumming and new People of Print Member swapped digital files for linoleum and ink in 2015. The cutting, inking and pressing process is as unpredictable as British weather, an aspect of print which Cumming most enjoys as often there are variations from one print to the next.
His journey began by uploading t-shirt designs to print on demand websites under the guise of Thundermonkey T-shirts focusing predominantly on pop culture mashups, he persevered with this until 2015. A combination of DMCA takedown requests from the likes of Lucasfilm, MGM and the estate of Albert Einstein and a frustration at the lack of a physical end product led Cumming to investigate other creative avenues. He had been inspired by German woodcuts and Soviet propaganda posters over the course of his research and happened across Printmakers Suzie Lacome and David Sim’s gallery in the coastal village of Crail. Their Victorian press and the smell of ink was enough to push him towards linocut.
After this, he threw himself into multicoloured, multiple and reduction linocut immediately. Shortly after in 2016 he was invited to join the Falkirk Creative Collective, a multidiscipline gang of artists promoting the fine arts across Central Scotland. Through their exhibitions, Cumming explored Falkirk’s architectural heritage, both the buildings that remain and those that had been lost. This has, in turn, led to exciting opportunities.
In 2017, Cumming was selected to take part in the inaugural www.getimprinted.org Instagram print exchange. To be included in this event, which feels like part of a growing movement that is driving forward a revival in printmaking, is a real honour David tells us. As part of the Collective, he exhibited during the annual Forth Valley Art Beat open studio event by repurposing an unused radio station building, breathing colour back into a neglected High Street for a week.
An aspect of his work over the last year has been of reuse. Cumming has been pulling prints from surplus commercial flooring material and on found paper, achieving prints that have been confused for paintings, given the irregular textures burnished with a smoothed down wooden spoon. Cumming is finding that the recycled materials, combined with the subject matter evoke a nostalgic feel of the city’s previous grittier reputation which he hopes captures its famously friendly and funny nature.
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