PRINTMAKING
My interest and fascination with printmaking began with wanting to print onto glass. It began at university with screenprinting using glass paints that needed firing in the kiln. This progressed to learning many other printmaking processes using etching inks on paper. The longing to apply the prints to glass was replaced by an ongoing passion for handmade printmaking. I particularly enjoy intaglio printmaking such as drypoint and monotypes. Combining these with other techniques such as cyanotype and colour solar printing is producing interesting results.
My current exploration is about untouchables. By that I'm not referring to the Indian untouchables but aspects of our natural world that are changed or ruined by us touching them, such as snowflakes, spiders'webs, ripples on water, smoke and many more.
MONARCH BUTTERFLY ON FLOWER
Drypoint print on Somerset Satin paper
MONARCH BUTTERFLY ON GHOST
FLOWER
Drypoint print on Somerset Satin paper
GHOST BUTTERFLY ON FLOWER
'The ghost butterfly
still settles on the flowers
it no longer needs
Drypoint print on Somerset Satin paper
3 GHOST BUTTERFLIES ON FLOWERS
These butterflies also no longer need to land on the flowers but they don't realise that
Drypoint print on Somerset Satin paper
BUTTERFLIES AND NETTLES
Red Admiral, Small Tortoiseshell and Peacock Butterflies all need to lay their eggs on nettles, the main food source for their caterpillars
Drypoint print on Somerset Satin paper
BUTTERFLIES AND NETTLES
Still on the theme of butterflies
Drypoint print over colour solar print using pressed leaves as masks on Taizan japanese paper
BUTTERFLIES AND NETTLES
Cyanotype print using inked drypoint plate and pressed leaves and flowers as masks on Taizan Japanese paper
SNOWFLAKES
Part of my project about 'untouchables'. Snowflakes are destroyed when we touch them with bare hands.
Intaglio print using masks and sandpaper shapes on Somerset Satin paper
WEB AND HANDS
Spiders' webs are another of the 'untouchables' because they are ruined as soon as we touch them.
Drypoint print on Somerset Satin paper
HAIKU FOR A NIGHTINGALE
Papercut Cyanotype on Hahnemuhle paper with 24ct gold leaf
NIGHTINGALE'S SERENADE
Papercut Cyanotype on Hahnemuhle paper with 24ct gold leaf
WEIGHT OF AWE
Embossed monotype on Somerset Satin paper
This is an image of Long Meg in Cumbria.
On seeing this enormous standing stone for the first time, William Wordsworth wrote a poem describing how he was struck with a 'weight of awe'
TIME AND NATURE HEAL
Carborundum Print on Somerset Satin paper
I like how Nature in the graveyard gradually covers the gravestones with lichens and ivy