For the last few months I've been chasing something elusive, something so difficult to pin down in words that it needed to be said in images instead. Having become hooked on the very particular qualites of ancient alders, I set myself the challenge of developing ways of drawing them which encompass not just what they look like, but what it feels like to know them too.

I've continued to make charcoal monoprints in the Big Studio, playing with compostion, scale, intentional and accidental mark making. The diffuse silhouette has emerged as an important motif, expressed in dense, amost flattened charcoal shapes with contrastingly delicate branch-like lines. You can see some in this recent blog post.

Alongside the printmaking, I'm also making drawings on cradled panel prepared with ground slate, shale, pure graphite and mica purchased from the amazing Colour Maker's House in Cumbria. 

I’m enjoying how the surface I’ve created with these natural pigments interacts with the drawn marks, giving the work history and depth which holds more of my experience of being in the landscape. It also lends itself to scraping and scratching into, so I can excavate the lights out of the charcoaly darkness.

It’s a way of working which seems to fit the history of these trees and their long seesaw life of growth and removal, regeneration and decay. I’m full of admiration for them and am listening carefully to what they can teach me about living resiliently.

It's still early days for this body of work, but if you'd like to see them as they grow, you are welcome to come to the studio in person or virtually - just get in touch to arrange a visit.