My first degree was in zoology. After many years working in wildlife film, I made a life-changing decision to undertake an MA in printmaking. My inspiration comes from the natural world. “Red Oak, 79 Years” celebrated an ancient felled oak, using hand-made prints of the annual rings.
“Thorn” rehabilitated brambles as something precious, by copper-plating blackberry stems.I attended the Soil Culture Symposium at Falmouth and made a short presentation about using the natural pigment recovered from an abandoned red ochre mine, to create my own ink and prints.
I am now working on a project “One Square Inch of Earth” where I am asking members of the public to send me “one square inch of earth” with a note saying exactly where the earth came from, and what it means to them. It may be soil from an urban garden, churchyard, farm, bog, roadside verge, forest, allotment, mountain peak, or river bank – whatever location has most significance. I want to celebrate this amazing substance that we so often take for granted by creating an “Emotional Soil Map” of Britain, literally mapping the emotional relationship we have with the earth beneath our feet.