Updated: March 2009

Artist's statement

My work explores our perceptions, impressions and sense of the world.

Printmaking feels like a natural discipline to have gravitated to, given my years as an illustrator and designer. There is a great deal of 'design' work involved in planning a print and cutting plates for each ink has the familiarity of a print process I've worked with for years.

My fascination is with the challenge of defining an image capturing a little of the impression a landscape makes on us – something a photograph, surprisingly perhaps, rarely achieves. I describe it as: “Landscape as we feel it to be”. My goal is to create images which are modern and highly stylised, yet instantly recognizable. I start by exploring the location itself; 'getting-to-know' it in person, seeking the iconic, memorable view or qualities of a place. This generally involves many visits, thumbnails and rough sketches, out of which the final image comes. Then there is much redrawing back at the studio as I think through precisly how to achieve the image using the humble medium of lino – a medium with distinctive qualities no other has. Once satisfied with the composition and confident I can produce it, I cut the first plate and the image almost takes on a life of it's own, as I review and adjust what I do next based on how each part has printed.

I consider myself a 'creative' and 'fine art' printmaker focussed on the development of a creative image, rather than a traditional purist, whose focus is on a strict established way of making prints. While I respect, study and draw upon the long history of printmaking, in the UK particularly, I seek ultimately to create images with character, a modern sensibility that are first and foremost: 'art'.

Relief print evolved from sketched impressions of 'Kilburn White Horse, Yorkshire'.

Contrary to the appearance of my relief prints, they are the result of much experimentation during their creation. After each plate, or colour, is printed, a review takes place and often the subsequent plates develop in a way which was not planned.

Relief print being pulled from the inked plate - 'Flamborough Lighthouse' landscape print.

Cutting a relief print block, especially in a medium with the limitations of lino, forces an artistic problem solving process. This process adds a stylistic, impressionistic, dimension to an image that is nevertheless representational. Figurative work with an 'other world' quality true to its central concept of the richness of impressions, perception and memory.

Detail of pencil and charcoal sketch study, showing old workings on the North York Moors landscape.

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