This year, my artwork has taken the form of small, intermittent projects: retreating to the materials, and particularly the processes I find most comforting and absorbing. I find the methodical nature of printmaking incredibly reassuring. There are steps to follow and plans to be drawn that give a project an innate momentum, carrying you forward through the inevitable snags, hesitations and pauses that come with creative pursuit. I was lucky enough to spend a week in the company of dear friends in a beautiful house on the Mawddach Estuary, Snowdonia. This drawing, and subsequent linocut, were started and finished in the studio there. The scene captures a moment from that week: after a swim in the river I’d come upstairs to work out what to draw, when I caught sight of the room itself, reflected in a mirror. I’ve included progress proofs, plans and the plates themselves as traces of processes and intentions. The experience of making, in those surroundings, were for me just as important as the finished print.
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