My Work

I am a professional wood-engraver based in Easterm England. Most of my work shows the rural environment around where I live. I engrave illustrations for fine press books and publish my own under the Isle Handpress imprint. I have also designed stamps for Royal Mail and specialise in designing and engraving Bookplates I am an elected member of the Society Of Wood Engravers and a member of the Wood Engravers Network.

 

Starting out

I have made detailed observational drawings for as long as I can remember and also enjoyed making multiple impressions from inked and painted wood. I made tiny woodcuts in my teens without really thinking of them as printmaking, but then left wood to experiment with other forms of relief prints, mainly linocuts.

When I first picked up a graver and engraved my first block, it was more like remembering a process rather than learning it.. The scale suited me - I was always something of a miniaturist - and I enjoyed the detail that I could work in The medium seemed to suit my interests, and I particularly enjoyed working in black and white.

 

Tuition

I'm pretty much self-taught as an engraver. I used old bookd to guide me and I was "shown the ropes" by a colleague called Pat Townsend who was a pupil of John O'Connor and Blair Hughes-Stanton at Colchester. After a lot of practice and some initial success, I enrolled in two courses taught by Sarah van Niekirk, who taught me a lot about planning my work.

 

Subject Matter

In the same way that I have always drawn the things around me, I am happiest when I base my prints on familiar subjects. these include my family, gardens, local wildlife and landscape and anything else that interests me. If a location holds a special meaning for me then I am likely to include it in a print.

When I was starting to make wood engravings, there was some resistance to continuing to make images of traditional, rural subjects. Somehow they were not always thought of as being progressive enough. For me, I was born in a small village in East Anglia and I engraved the landscapes and wildlife, and these remain an important focus for my printmaking.

In recent years, it has become clear that our natural environment is under threat in many ways, and our prints can both highlight and record the effects of climate change, loss of habitat and resulting loss of biodiversity. The threat to our bees is something that is a particular concern for me and I celebrate them regularly in my work.