Alongside printmaking I am exploring painting and have signed up to Gabriella Buckingham's 'Experimental Still Life' course, which is online and self-paced. I've found it to be packed with inspiration for colour and composition which can be applied to printmaking as well as painting.

Practice practice practice! As an incentive joined in the twice-yearly Strada Easel challenge to paint form life every day for a month and post the resulting paintings on Instagram. So, during September 2024 I painted small still lifes on scrap cardboard. This coincided with the weeks I was visiting my Mum to sit by her and watch her long life come to an end.

At first the paintings seemed like a chore …



… they became a daily habit …



… the ceramic vessels and flowers were like characters on a stage, spending time with these small scenes was like therapy …



… the daily painting, especially the monochrome hurried ones, became a necessity.



I'd like to say I've continued the habit, I haven't. But I am beginning to miss it and I will do it again.

Among my first linocuts almost 20 years ago, included designs depicting the hares I see in the local fields where I walk regularly. Last year I decided to revisit those designs and create two new circular linocuts 'Sleeping Hare' and 'Dancing Hares'.



There are also cards of the two new designs. These were printed for me by an indie print business in Yorkshire, so they look a little different from my usual greetings cards. The new hare roundel cards are available from my online shop.

I'm pleased I have now sourced a supply of recycled card stock and my eco-friendly cards are now back in production, I've ordered reprints of the popular designs which were out of stock and have ideas for new linocuts and cards.

Over the past year my good intentions to keep this News page up to date have fallen by the wayside, or rather they became low priority behind other things.
Good things … we actually went on the Canadian road trip we'd planned then had to cancel in 2020.
And sad things … I watched my mum as she slowly faded to the end of her long life.

I also realised that a pause is good.

Last summer Springetts Brand Design asked me to create a large linocut illustration to be part of the rebranding of DukesHill, a long established company supplying high quality artisan foods.

In an online meeting I was introduced to the Dukeshill marketing team and together we came up with 'a slice of the Shropshire countryside' which could be used as a wide landscape illustration.

Once everyone was happy with the design I carved it into the lino block.



I used a dark ink (mixed from Prussian Blue and Van Duck Brown which I find easier to work with than Black ink) to ink the block and take proofs on Japanese paper for scanning.



After scanning and editing, my final illustration was supplied as a black and white digital file. The design team used this to create the new branding in a dark teal green colour.



The illustration is printed on DukesHiil's new cardboard delivery boxes, thank you to Springetts Brand Design for the photos.



And details can be used on the DukesHill web site, marketing emails and gift cards.