the Art Trail is coming

I'm really excited - the Southbank Art Trail is coming up at the weekend and I love it!  Some years I have opened our house (what a lot of tidying that makes me do...) and some years I've had a stall at the Southville Centre where they have music and a cafe all weekend...

This year I'm going to have my work at The Bed Workshop on Braunton Road with some other printmakers.

It is a really fantastic gallery space in an old brick pickle factory, which is now full of beautiful beds and French furniture - what more could I want?  Pictures will be here by the end of the week as I don't really expect you all to pop over.

Needless to say, the production line is in full swing and the packaging department had better get ready for a busy week.

cowparsley and prints

Too many holiday days and too much dry weather - I've started ignoring them all and have been printing away as May is a month of deadlines (although I could have done all the work in January if I'd been clever...).

The hedgerows have come to me though and several extravagant bunches of cowparsley have been picked.  I love it, it seems to have been in flower for most of my childhood, and what would look better in any serious flower arrangement?  Coupled with some heavyweights like roses it would add just the right amount of froth.

It does drop bits in my ink though and has now been removed to a safe distance...

I'm printing for the Affordable Art Fair in Bristol later this month and will show you the pictures that are back from the framers soon.

a print queue

sometimes I can't wait to print each lino block as soon as it's finished and see the results of all the patient gouging and find out if the plan has worked and all the words are the right way around and all is well....


this time I've started saving them up ready for a big self-indulgent printing day (maybe friday morning if the mood takes me!) when everyone else will be banished from the house and the fact that I still haven't built any kind of drying rack will mean that they might not be allowed back for a couple of days...

it's a high tech business

it's not just anyone who can take up lino printing - just look at the huge amount of equipment needed...

I've never used a press for printing since leaving college and find my trusty box wood burnishing tools (on the right) to be the best - but if you look closely you can see how worn out the edges are, all those hundreds of prints have taken their toll, and now there's some awful news...my suppliers no longer sell them.  eeeek.  There's nothing better in my world for getting my prints exactly right.  If anyone knows an art shop with a dusty drawer full let me know, I can't imagine anyone did a roaring trade, but I need a new one about every three years...