Artist Biography

The idea for my collaboration with Anne-Lie Larsson Ljung came from my three chosen words: Sacred; Landscape; Connection. My two prints are called Cailleah Bheara Creation Goddess and is a Scottish creation myth about the Queen of Winter who strode across the wasteland creating mountains, valleys and hills from rocks thrown to make stepping stones across the land. The second print is called Oak Witnessing Time and is an ancient tree in a field overlooking a farmstead in a valley observing the passage of time passing over 100 years. I have a great interest in wild unspoiled landscapes; trees; water; rocks and ancient myths expressed in Making Contact: Ta Kontakt, through images and accompanying poems written in Swedish and English. 
 
The techniques I’ve used are etching and drypoint on copper using a variety of techniques including a delicate painterly spitbite on aquatint and a deep etch in ferric chloride combined with drypoint and roulette to add variety of texture and line. Each plate was inked up with Charbonnel Black 55981 and the second plates with Carmine S5 blended with Sepia to make a dark red, then wiped using scrim, newsprint, and finally a gentle hand-wiping to create a surface that retains fine detail and a rich velvety line and areas of tonality, without removing too much surface tone. The plates are then run through a Rochat press. 
 
The poems have been made on solarplates and exposed under a UV suction press to get a crisp text then inked with a roller and hand wiped for plate tone – exposed and printed by Anne-Lie Larsson Ljung. Our prints will be displayed a bit like an open book on gesso boards constructed to stand up on a table in the gallery so that visitors can walk around it and view it from both sides.
 
I have also designed a simple booklet of our images and poems printed in Sweden to accompany our work.