Mono-Prints (using non-caustic paper and inks)
Etchings
Untitled Photo etchings, 2011 - 2017
I've always been a walker, even as a kid, me and my best mates, twins, Janet and Judith would go on long walks, with no plan - just a sense of adventure. I've enjoyed walking ever since - whether in towns and cities or in the countryside - and I often document the things I encounter along the way. I grew up in a small town in Cheshire in the northwest of England in a neighbourhood known as The Bluebell after the Bluebell Woods which existed back then, but have been since built over. Playing in those woods when I was a kid and seeing the huge swathes of bluebells that appeared every spring really inspired a life-long love of trees and other plants - and a sense that green spaces like those magical woods are fragile and always under threat.
When I first started making drawings and etchings of trees back at Camden Workingmen's College, I soon decided that trees actually draw themselves. Branches, stems and leaves growing outwards from the trunk and form intricate patterns comprising sharply defined graphite-like lines alongside softer charcoal clusters. Drawings that are ever-evolving as the trees adjust to the changing seasons.
With this in mind, the below photo-etchings are based on self-portraits made by the trees themselves.
(I stopped working with this etching process as I felt the materials and chemicals associated with it are just too environmentally toxic)
