This month has seen me start the year…small. And I’m OK with that.  In fact, I think there are seasons for small art in our practice and to lean into them when they come.  Some of you may know that I oscillate between urges to make massive loose artworks, and urges to make jewel…

I do love the feeling of new beginnings and my tendency to plan (and buy stationery to plan in/on) goes into overdrive around this time of year.  But it’s also an inward time.  A time to remember and celebrate. To calibrate, to dream, to anticipate.   And so I find myself hovering between plunging…

I have written before about my dislike of the leaving of the light at this time of year.  The idea and philosophy of Wabi-sabi allows me to enjoy the quality of light (if not quantity), the small things each day, the spare, simple and stark- in short, the pleasures of winter. I’ve always been…

I’m a big fan of constraints and I have a feeling most printmakers are (secretly or otherwise). Printmaking has a built in set of constraints (some techniques more than others), that you immediately need to work around and with, maybe even learn to love, sometimes finding something new by pushing against them as far…

‘There is no such thing as a copy really.  Everything is just a translation of something else.’ David Hockney Three things influencing this blog post:  Reading ‘Spring Cannot be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy’ (by Martin Gayford), visiting the Royal West of England Academy Open Exhibition and having to choose a piece of art…

I quite often go to the studio and feel… well flat and at a loss.  But one of the best pieces of advice I ever got (from an older artist), was that you have to keep on keeping on.  Even if it’s rubbish, even if it’s not ‘good’, even if you don’t feel like…

I have long felt that two threads of my life- art making, and action taking around environmental issues (albeit low key), have been separate, compartmentalised.   I recently attended a symposium on art and environmental and climate change at The Burton at Bideford in Devon.  It was based around the work of Bristol printmaker…

As an illustration student and then a printmaker, I’ve almost always been surrounded by good draughts-people, and some that are frankly amazing at drawing. It can be intimidating. The received wisdom during my student years (and beyond) was that drawing was the foundation of all that was good in the art world and that…

…to skate away on. So says the Joni Mitchell song, ‘River’. As a native Canadian Joni obviously thinks of rivers as frozen entities (and I love the idea of skating full pelt through a snowy wilderness, when I want to escape the world- my skating skills pushed aside for the moment!). But I want…

…teach. That’s the saying anyway, but I’ve never believed this. For a start comparing creating and teaching is like comparing apples and oranges- they are completely different mindsets and disciplines. Sometimes you find an artist who’s a good teacher, sometimes a good teacher who’s creative in what they do. Very rarely, you come across…