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Still life adventures

2025-03-26T11:25:16+00:00

After carving lino and wood blocks for over 20 years my arm needed and rest and my mind needed a reset. So I've been thoroughly enjoying following Gabriella Buckingham's online course 'Experimental Still Life' and the current live online version is particularly inspiring. You can find out more about her courses here.

I've updated my web site and the Paintings page now shows the feed from my @walkinglooking painting Instagram account. On there I share my paintings and sketches, including real-life adventures in my travel sketchbooks.

Return to Saffron Walden

2025-03-26T11:13:54+00:00

I recently delivered some of my linocuts to the Church Street Gallery in Saffron Walden. This beautifully curated gallery is opposite the footpath to the church in what has just been declared the UK's best place to live! So that's two good reasons to explore the delights of Saffron Walden, I can also recommend visiting the Fry Gallery and there are many lovely independent shop and cafés.

What's On in 2024

2024-04-21T10:15:54+01:00

I will be selling my original prints and unique range of greetings cards at the following events 2024

I'm looking forward to return to the Eddington Arts spring event in the beautiful Storey's Field Centre on Saturday 27th April

Easy parking, refreshments and live music too!

These are the fabulous creative folk at this April's event …

And then the next morning I'll be up bright and early to drive to Wyken Hall, just north of Bury St Edmunds in West Suffolk, for Plants and Crafts in the gardens of Wyken Hall.
The beautiful Leaping Hare restaurant and shop will also be open as well as the garden and surrounding walks around Wyken Hall. So it's a full day of treats!!

On Monday 29th April I will be sleeping.

Looking ahead to the summer ….

August 16, 17 and 18 I will be back at FolkEast in the ArtArcade marquee with some fabulous artists and makers
and of course there's some great musicians there too in the grounds of Glemham Hall, Suffolk (just off the A12 near Woodbridge)

Hope to see you there
Celia x

Flowers and pots

2024-04-10T12:40:45+01:00

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.

Sleeping and Dancing Hares

2024-03-04T11:57:39+00:00

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.

Why the big pause?

2024-02-29T10:35:41+00:00

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.

Linocut illustration for DukesHill

2023-02-23T10:38:23+00:00

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.

Sandringham Estate Lavender

2023-02-14T12:01:12+00:00

In spring last year I was asked by Peter, at Windett Design, to produce a linocut illustration for the packaging for Sandringham Estate's lavender products. The design is similar to my Lavender Hare design, but without the hare and with the iconic north-west Norfolk coastal landscape as the background.

The lavender products are now available in the Sandringham Estate shop (not yet in the online shop, hopefully they will be this year)

The design started life as a sketch which after approval by the design team, I carved into the lino block.

I inked the block with a dark colour mixed from Van Dyke Brown and Prussian Blue. I very rarely use black as I find the coloured inks much easier to work with.

The final artwork was going to be digital and in specific 'spot colours', so I needed a clean dark print to scan in black and white (greyscale)

This is the final digital two colour artwork I supplied for the designers to use for the packaging for the six different products made from lavender grown on the Sandringham Estate.

My Redbubble shop is open

2023-01-05T16:22:05+00:00

Some of you may have come across Redbubble, an online shop with products decorated with designs from indie artists and designers. I'd had an account for a few years but not got around to uploading any designs and selecting which products to allow them to be printed onto. Just before Christmas I was listening to a favourite podcast and up popped an advert for Redbubble. So, I've experimented with six designs and few products … a travel mug and water bottle, an apron, phone cases and cushions, button badges and even a jigsaw (you can select the size and number of pieces).

To explore more hop over to my Redbubble shop and have a browse

www.redbubble.com/people/celiahartartist

Walking - looking - drawing

2022-12-08T12:49:11+00:00

Since 2020 I have been exploring landscape painting. I realised that I wanted to combine my love of walking out in the countryside with my art practice. When you walk through a landscape and take in your surroundings, you are not a camera taking a single snap shot, you are a multi-sensory organism that is part of the landscape you are moving through.

In October 2022 I was lucky to be able to join a group of artists for a day drawing on Orford Ness, a shingle spit island off the Suffolk Coast.

I like to work in 'concertina sketchbooks' which I make from off-cuts of thick cartridge paper.

I often visit Ickworth Park, in November 2022 I combined a walk with an intense hour sketching. I had prepared the paper with tape masking off sections and painting the surface with tinted gesso mixed with a pumice get to give the surface 'bite'.

In December 2022 I spent a night in my camper van next to Bacton beach on the NE coast of Norfolk. It was wild and stormy but the sun briefly came out in the morning and I did a very quick sketch standing by the groynes as the waves crashed onto the shore.

There's nothing like being outside in the landscape to get a feel of its shapes and colours. You can see a couple of short videos of my tips for outdoor sketching in winter part 1 and part 2 over on my Instagram @walkinglookingpainting

My illustrations for Gardens Illustrated Magazine

2022-11-23T10:41:39+00:00

Some of you, especially the gardeners among you, may remember that from April 2015 to December 2017 I illustrated Frank Ronan's column on the final page of Gardeners Illustrated Magazine. Each month the editor would email me Frank's words, I would then have about a week to read it and create a linocut illustration. I enjoyed spotting the literary references with which Frank scatters his prose and in response I would sometimes introduce art references into my illustration.

In addition to my fee for the work, I retained the copyright of the artwork and so some of the illustrations have become my most popular greetings card designs, these and the original linocut editions are available from my shop.

I wrote about my working process on my blog PurplePoddedPeas, you can read the blogposts here which include my sketches and thoughts about the linocut designs.

Into the red

2022-11-15T14:44:20+00:00

This is a book that I wish there was no need to be published, it's a collection of words and art inspired by Britain's most vulnerable birds. Currently there are 70 birds on the 'Red List', that's nearly double the number when the list was first drawn up in 1996.
Our birds are in trouble. We don't miss what we didn't know existed, so this book is a collection of portraits of these precious bird species in words and pictures, if you get to know and love a wild bird then you will fight for its habitats to survive or be restored and created.

I was surprised but delighted to be invited to take part in the project by allowing the BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) to use my linocut 'Winter Visitors' to illustrate Bewick Swans. All the images and bird descriptions are worth mention, I'll just pick out a few as I flick through the pages. A beautiful painting of a Whinchat by Brin Edwards; Fieldfares by Charlotte Strawbridge, I love the wintery feel of this one; a delightful linocut of a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker by Mackenzie Crook multi-talented actor/director/artist (creator of the Detectorists television comedy series); a Whimbrel in a perfectly caught stance by Jim Moir (who you might be more familiar as comedian Vic Reeves). And there's my linocut of Bewick Swans.

The original limited edition linocuts of "Winter Visitors" are available from my online shop. The design is also available as a greetings card … it would make a lovely alternative christmas card.

The book, Into the Red is available from the BTO online shop. Get to know these beautiful birds and care that they survive.

Cards 'not just for christmas'

2022-11-10T12:25:37+00:00

This year's new pack of cards 'not just for Christmas' is Winter Bird Garden, inspired by the birds that visit my garden in the winter months.

In addition to the pack of four small cards there is also a new card in eco-friendly card range.

The cards feature Long-tailed Tits, Blackbirds, a Robin, Wren and Redwing among Spindle berries, Rose hips, Holly berries and Haws.

These new designs join six other pack of 'not just for christmas' cards.

All the cards are available from my online shop

New look

2022-11-09T12:24:36+00:00

What's the gestation period for a web site makeover? This one has been a work in progress for a bout a year but there comes a point when it's best to just publish it and then add and refine later. So, here it is. If you notice any glitches or want to give helpful feedback let me know.

This News/Blog page will be used for updates about new work and events, as well as looking back at past projects.

And just to test how to post a photo … this is where I work.