I’ve never really tried this technique but I’ve always been intrigued with it as I’ve seen some lovely effects made by artists this way. I finally got round to having a play with it this week and I made a basic, fairly crude relief with paper glued down on board. The image was based loosely on the facade of Peterboroufh cathedral, one of my favourites in the UK and it provided a good, strong shape to get started (I took the liberty of removing the 16thC porch which I always felt spoilt the impact of the fantastic three giant arches across the Early English style West Front):

Once I got the main shapes pasted down I started pulling off quick, rough prints from the relief and it was great fun seeing each one come out so differently. I worked on the image a bit more, and added some stencilling and masking techniques to make the image at the top of this post, but here are a few prints from along the way:

And here are a few more products of the process, along with the original thumbnail where I started from:

Now the next step will be to learn how to control it a bit whilst retaining the element of chance and accident that makes the technique rewarding; keep collagraphing basically.

Organising my workspace this morning I came across these funny little drawings I did about three years ago. The green man theme is another one I come back to again and again. Hmm, one of these looks distinctly like my hubby!

The Enchanted Isles, acrylic on panel, 40cms x 10cms, 2015

Islands have featured in my work off and on for the last couple of years or more and I’m drawn back to them as subject matter all the time. Growing up in the UK, which is a really wonderful collection of islands of course, may have something to do with it; you’re never really that far from the coast anywhere in the UK.

This small wide format painting is a fictional collection of islands, though, the Enchanted Isles in Tolkien’s Silmarillion. The archipelago was placed offshore along the coast of Valinor, home of the gods, as a barrier, protecting the place from attack. The islands were enchanted so that mariners would not be able to find their way through, and anybody who set foot on one of the islands would fall asleep for ever.

i’ve moved to the city of Berlin this week and now live on another island of sorts, the Rote Insel, or Red Island district, so called because it is surrounded by railway tracks set in deep gulleys and can only be reached by bridge. The neighbourhood used to be seen as a left-leaning working class area, hence the ‘red’.

I think it’s their ‘separateness’ that makes islands so alluring, they seem apart from the mundane world, more magical somehow, more interesting, places of discovery and adventure. I’m certainly smitten with them!

January had flown by in a whirl of sorting, packing and trying to tie up all the loose ends in the office so there’s been very little for producing new paintings, or for keeping up with people’s blogs for that matter, so apologies. I’m very nearly there, though; l left the office today for the last time and I’m flying off to base myself full-time in Berlin with hubby Jan and pusscat Susan tomorrow. It’s all a bit breathless but one upside from the process is finding a lot of old work I’d forgotten about. I discovered a collage in a cupboard I’d been only partially happy with, but looking at it afresh I thought I’d try cropping it down as I liked this detail of the two islands:

It’s only a tiny piece now, 13cms x 17cms but better for it.

I’m in Berlin for three weeks from tomorrow, then back in the UK for an exhibition in Whitstable. Time to start producing some new stuff!

Firstly, happy new year and a big, big thank you to everybody who dropped by the blog in 2014. Whether it’s for a quick peek or to make a comment, I so appreciate all the time people take, and particularly for the feedback and encouragement.

Right, now for 2015 – It doesn’t seem quite right to start the new year off with some old work, but the last few weeks have seen such a lot of sorting out of old clutter and I’ve been re-discovering all kinds of stuff I’d forgotten about. The sorting out is mainly due to my relocating to Berlin after being based in London for nearly four years. So, I’ve been going through all the bits I’d accumulated in London and then me and Jan have been clearing out in Berlin too. We’ve got a fairly big cellar with our flat, which is great when you’re not quite sure what to do with something, but the regular conversation of ‘what shall we do with this hon, shall we chuck it out?’, ‘no, put it in the cellar, you never know…’ is fine until the cellar is full and you need to find something. Last week we bought a Christmas tree, but the stand we needed to put it in we were sure was in the cellar. After an hour of turning it out, getting hot, dusty and cross, we ended up having to go over to a friends to borrow one – things had clearly got out of hand in the cellar so we braced ourselves yesterday and started to sort it out. What turned up – apart from that Christmas tree base of course – was some old work I’d done years ago.

I’ve stored away quite a lot of work, much of it representing experiments with   new media I was trying, or playing with new directions. There was a period in particular from about 2009 – 2012 when I had started painting again after a long gap of twenty years or so and when I was trying all kinds of different approaches as I was getting back into creating. Here are a couple of paintings from that time; firstly, a small painting of a hilltop village a few miles inland from Tarragona in Spain where I’d gone with some friends for a rock climbing holiday:

And another, this one of a fantasy forest scene:

I know people say never throw anything away but where do you put the stuff?  Some things just have to go but as these two are painted on paper they can be stored easily in a portfolio, it’s the canvasses that get a bit of a problem!

And finally, here’s the tree, ta-da!