One morning last week a friend called to say he had found a stoat in the lane. He said it must have been hit by a car but was unmarked and would I like it to draw? Waiting for him to turn up with the creature, I noticed that I knew nothing about stoats and had... Read more »
This is to be the year I learn la manière noire – the dark method. There is something rather magical about mezzotints. I’ve noticed when printing them in the workshop that it is never long before some curious soul is drawn to look over my shoulder and enquire, “what on earth is that?“ They are simply unlike anything... Read more »
In 2010 I took a break from my usual painting practise to make a series of very small still-lives. My yoga teacher had been talking about the nature of ‘practise’ – not getting too attached to good and bad, just practising, modestly and consistently and every day. Non-attachment was an idea I was familiar with... Read more »
It has been two years this month since I picked up a paint brush. For two years or more before that I had been finding oil painting increasingly confusing. Nothing pleased me. At times the multiplicity of choices – brush, colour, tone, surface, subject and so on – had, without exaggeration, begun to make... Read more »
Here’s a nice story of social media meeting the world of the hand-made…. I’m always on the look out for nice paper and take a good deal of trouble to always choose and use the right paper – the right colour, the right weight, and almost above all the right surface, (Hot Press, Not or... Read more »
Nothing is ever quite as perfect as it can seem at first glance.Although the latin name for Dragonflies is Odonata their infraorder is Anisoptera which comes from the Greek meaning ‘uneven wings’. This is my second attempt at a dry-point of the same dragonfly. What attracts me most of all is indeed the play of... Read more »
Nothing Lasts. Nothing is so delicate or so finely hinged as the wingsof the green mothagainst the lanternagainst its heatagainst the beak of the crowin the early morning. Yet the moth has trim, and feistiness, and not a dropof self-pity. Not in this world Mary Oliver(Proof of Magpie Moth etching on studio wall – etching... Read more »