Gallery

Place

23 March - 20 April

In the last few years my life has dramatically changed. From living on my own Crewkerne I’m now married and live halfway up Eggardon Hill Fort near Bridport. Eggardon has always been one of ‘those’ places for me. I’ve been coming here regularly for the last 20 years to clear my head – it’s often windy – to breathe and to remind myself of the land, sky and sea of west Dorset, you can see a fair chunk of it from up here. A number of my prints have been inspired by this view, and the light and the colour.

After years of working, my life now means that I can afford to sit and stare for a bit and I’ve been thinking about how to develop my work and in what direction to take it. This is a luxury, I know, but valuable time none the less. I want to develop the way in which I make my prints, the way I apply colour and also my choice of subject. Landscape is central to almost every piece that I make and more recently, trees. Trees have characters, some trees anyway, and a way of being, of inhabiting a space.

Last year, when I talked about a forthcoming solo exhibition with Kelly, I decided to make 10 new prints and to approach them in a new way, adopting some of the ideas that I’d had while sitting and staring. Many of the techniques I’m using I’ve used before but I’ve developed them; sometimes it’s felt like I’m conducting a ridiculous orchestra, if everything comes together and plays its tune in the right place it’ll be ok, otherwise, total chaos. There is more paint applied before and after printing, wood and linocut mixed up together in the same piece, more varnish masking and caustic soda etching and more using anything that leaves a mark. And more people.

So, it’s about Place. Place is explained as ‘a particular point, or area in space, a location’; a sense of place goes further and describes a specific place to which there is an emotive bond or attachment. It can reflect mood, encourage or discourage.

The places I’ve chosen are places of reflection, discussion, contemplation or argument. It may be under a favourite tree with a picnic table and a view; an ornate summerhouse set in a glade below a hill; a beautiful midsummer evening next to a tree; a house built in a clearing high up on a Norwegian mountain; two trees growing together on the edge of a fford.

While doing these prints I’ve been listening to fairy tales by Hans Christian Anderson; fantastical and extravagant stories that in the end always relate to basic human behaviour and instinct. That’s why I’ve included people in some of the prints and sometimes those people are in disagreement or doubt; discord in the midst of bucolic harmony.