On The Other Side

Following extensive travels and stays in the Middle East and North Africa I worked as a design and layout artist in a publishing and print firm in London. I returned to teaching in the Midlands and remained there for twenty years, graduating with an MA from Birmingham School of Art, where I became Senior Lecturer. After my move to Devon my work has been informed by wonderful Dartmoor views from my house on a hill in Velwell, Dartington. Travels around Europe, Malaysia, Nepal, India, Mexico, the USA, Greece, and more recently Australia, have enriched my practice.

 

Topographical images interest me. I am drawn not to the accurate, descriptive qualities of an outside landscape but to an inner landscape that transcends description yet is highly expressive, being more concerned with a feeling for a place. I enjoy contrasts: looseness and precision, lightness and darkness, the microscopic and macroscopic. I enjoy shimmering colour and the drama of black against vibrant colour. Monotypes, the most painterly form of Printmaking, enables this. As the name suggests, each one is unique. Using printing ink and rollers an image is created on a steel plate and transferred to paper by being pulled through an etching press. I sometimes add ‘chine colle’, silver or gold leaf, when I wish to emphasise the mineral quality of the earth. The starting point for my monotypes may be landscape, lines or colours seen and recorded in my sketchbook or my mind. The work then takes a journey of its own, revealing its own dynamic until completion. The term ‘landscape artist’ to me seems imprecise. I am finding more satisfaction in moving towards abstraction, striving to produce work that reveals feelings that transcend the immediate landscape. I endeavour to express the inexpressible.

Monotype with Gold Leaf

27x27cm