KATY McGAHAN
 

Untitled Photo etchings, 2011 - 2015

 

I love walking, whether in towns and cities or in the countryside - and documenting the things I encounter along the way. I grew up in an area of Cheshire in the northwest of England known as The Bluebell after the Bluebell Woods that existed back then, but unfortunately have since been 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. 

 

When I first started making drawings and etchings of trees back in 2011 at Camden Workingmen's College, I quickly realised that trees draw themselves. Branches, stems and leaves grow outwards from the trunk to form intricate patterns of sharply defined graphite-like lines and softer clusters of dusted charcoal.

 

So - I like to regard the below tree images as photo-etchings made by me of self-portraits made by trees.