I don’t know what happened this year. I’m usually so ready for my children to be back at school – mainly because I’m panicking about the jobs that are piling up, and I’m quite ready for some quiet creative time. Maybe they’re older and easier, need less organising. They definitely help more. They are so interesting! Anyway – for the first time, I’ve not quite wanted summer to end. We had some great adventures in ‘Henri’ – our camper van. Henri is new to us and we’re new at campervaning, so this was a bit of a major maiden voyage. But what with GCSE revision and bad weather in the months leading up to this, we never managed to get much practice in. Still – go big or go home. We did a BIG first trip.

In France – A little sailing, paddle boarding (not me) and a summer Luge!

After the Lakeland 50 I was quite ready to just sit for a bit and we did a lot of that in around Lake Annecy. Sitting and reading, and eating a lot of french bread!

My Mum and Dad marked their Golden Wedding in August and had asked that ALL their children come and help them celebrate (which is why I wasn’t at Art in the Pen in August). A good half way point between Budapest (my big sister is there) and Yorkshire is Bavaria, where we all gathered. From Annecy we drove through Switzerland. It was not a favourite part of the holiday! We had to do a ‘wing it’ stop which is tricky with 5 in a camper. It was very hot and a very tight squeeze. German neighbours in a large motorhome found the idea of all 5 of us in a van you could practically park inside theirs very funny!

I love being part of a big family. I’m the quiet, cautious sister. I wish I wasn’t – it’s just the way it is. But I love being on the edge of a gathering and seeing everyone play and get along. As well as Mum and Dad, there are 3 daughters and husbands, and 9 Grandchildren, ranging from 6 to 24. That’s quite a gathering. We needed a lot of space and lot of food! My favourite thing all week was a Thursday evening chip cook-off with Daniel and my two brothers-in-law cooking. Think Great British Bake-off, but all being done outside, by candle light in a spectacular 3 hour Bavarian thunderstorm.

There was another German family staying in the grounds, sharing communal space. One of them said ‘I love your family. It is so Harmonious’. I like that. We must always try and be harmonious.

After a week of us all together, is was just us 5 in Henri Van again, starting the journey back home, with a few more stops. How lovely is Freiburg??

Unfortunately our full day there was a Sunday so not one of the beautiful shops was open. Instead we did galleries and I gathered patterns. It was so, so hot that in the afternoon we did what the locals do; sat with our feet in the river and read books (though two of our party may have been also looking for treasure. There’s always something to find: patterns, bottle tops, pretty stones…).

A French stop, an English stop, and back just in time for Hattie to collect her GCSE results on Thursday morning. Being away was the perfect distraction, but the morning of results day was tense in our house! She’s worked so hard and the look on her face when she sprinted out of the school hall with her envelope told us everything. She was so happy. She and her friends had agreed not to share their results, only to tell each other if they were pleased. That way no one felt out-done. Isn’t that lovely? I couldn’t be prouder of my beautiful eldest daughter. Here is a picture of her ‘Congratulations on being brilliant Converse Trainers’:

She’s off to Greenhead College. A level Art; well, of course…

A few days out with the visiting Aussie relations seem to have been mostly spent climbing and hiding in trees.

And then, because it was so unexpectedly fine and it would be rude not to, one last trip of the summer to the East Coast!

If you made it to the end then, crikey – well done. I didn’t intend this to be so long! There’s nothing really creative in this blog post. Just family, and sunshine. But I have been planning. Something big is happening next summer for which I shall need a lot of help from the people of Calderdale. I’m running the Yorkshireman Marathon tomorrow (In this heat!), and then I’m done with playing and back to work!

I’m not going to lie; I almost bit off more than I could chew with this exhibition. Turns out that there are A LOT of letters in the alphabet. I got to letter 12 and said to myself “I don’t think you’ve thought this through…”. But I did it. I even did an ‘X’!

I’ve displayed them framed all together and on little clipboards at Heart Gallery (they can be bought as the full set, or individually). You can see the individual letters here.

The very last painting I completed before my final trip to the framers was this one:

Of all the new pieces it was probably the first one I planned, and that would have been several years ago. I love the way that these three features line up perfectly as you decend the path from Pecket Well: Stoodley Pike, Heptonstall Church, Pecket Well Monument (often called Little Stoodley (or ‘Steve Pike’ by my daughter one day in the back of the car who announced that it was Stoodley’s little brother)). It’s a view I know so well and in all seasons. There was a particular light and a particular season I wanted to catch so I kept having to go back there to check how spring was progressing. Spring comes later to the tops than the valley bottom in some places, so the hawthorne was almost over on one side of the valley and only just emerging up there. The goldfinches were a bonus though. I love the way goldfinches chatter; it’s like they’re gossiping.

The painting sold first at the Private View at the gallery on May 11th, though it will stay on the wall for a while yet. I met the people that bought it; it’s important to know that favourite pictures are going to nice people! I’d grown very attached to this one.

One of the first paintings I started was this one of the bridge and the waterfall in Nutclough woods.

I kept going back to the woods with this piece. And it’s quite big, so it wasn’t easy! I don’t usually paint outside but I needed to see this one in situ because I couldn’t get the intensity of colour quite right. The scene is so rich in colour: the coppers so deep and that bright green almost yellow. Someone at the exhibition said they could see the wind in the trees and I loved that!

My friend Nancyann says that this painting is like a great big lung full!

It’s the descent from Stoodley Pike via Swillington. The Skylarks round here are one of the earliest signs of spring coming. They start at the end of February and they get louder until June. Right now the grasses on the moors are full of them and on the Swillington path they swoop low from one side to the other (they nest in the tussocks). As an incomer, cottongrass always excites me. It’s like stars, or snow! It’s beautiful. These two things are particularly synonymous with Erringdon Moor and the Pike.

The private view for HOME was lovely – thank you to everyone that came! The exhibition runs until the end of July.

Heart gallery is stocking all of the new limited edition giclee prints and wood engraving. From June 11th they will start to be available in other galleries and on line. I do this to try and encourage visitors to the gallery to see the exhibition.

I’m counting down the weeks now until my exhibition – ‘HOME’ opens at Heart Gallery in Hebden Bridge. Painting these has got me through the darker winter months which always seem hard in the valley. It’s been good seek beautiful things here; a bit of colour maybe in the more monochromatic months. A reason to head up hill in search of a bit of light!

It’s been a decade since I began exhibiting at Heart Gallery. Five years since the ‘Craggs and Fells’ exhibition. This time it’s been all about what makes the valley feel like home. Little things you only notice because you’re so familiar with a place and its changing light. This is the most recent one – called ‘New Years Day’, because there’s a point, around Christmas, where I lose the light in my house for a few weeks (I live right in the valley bottom). On Market Street, soon after the winter solstice, the old Zion chapel gets lit up like gold by the winter sun.

Then you know the days are getting longer again – it feels very optimistic. The light was spectacular this January and I’d often head out early with my camera and notebook (working fast with very cold hands!). On one such walk I stumbled across this view across the canal.

Fountain Street always feels like an iconic Hebden Bridge street and I’ve been trying to find a way to paint it for years.

There are two moorland landscapes almost finished as well. I’ve been away in Wiltshire for a week, visiting my family, and had to run to Stoodley Pike this morning to check on the curlews and skylarks. I love the sound of the birds up there! There were plenty of skylarks down near Mum and Dad, but never curlews. I sometimes have to send a little video to Dad, so he can hear them.

There will be 11 paintings in all, and (hopefully!) my Hebden Bridge A – Z of tiny wood engravings! I’ll post more about those once I’ve completed the three new ones I started this week: N – for Nelsons. T – for Trades. I – for Innovation Mill…

The exhibition opens properly on May 12th and will run until the end of July. There will be a private view on the evening of the 11th. If you’d like an invitation, then please drop me a line.

It’s far too long since I last did this! I’m sorry – I’m always someone who’d rather be getting painty hands than sitting in front of a computer. Consequestly this will be a Christmas and everything else I’ve been doing, all at once kind of Blog post…

I didn’t take part in the Hebden Makes Christmas event this weekend. It clashed with the twin’s birthday and I am no good at being two people at once. I either need to be all Mummy, or all work, and I didn’t want to short change them. Instead we went to see The Lion King in Manchester – which was amazing (despite the second worst train journey in living memory). We did get to mooch around the studios and fairs on Saturday though and it looked amazing! I bought many things, many of them not gifts for other people. Next year, if it goes ahead again, I hope to take part as an exhibitor.

So, if anyone still has gaps in their Christmas shopping, I have opened my last box of calendars this week.

And lanterns are a lovely gift to cheer people I think. We love candles in our house.

I wanted to share with you my favourite pictures from this year. I had an exhibition at Chantry House Gallery in June ‘Whispering Ruins’ – and I was especially proud of these two: Byland Marshes I visited for the first time in Autumn 2021. It’s a wonderfully atmospheric place. I was a student in York so I have so many happy memories of sitting in the Museum Gardens with books and picnics.

‘Evening at Shibden‘ I painted earlier this year and auctioned for the Ukraine Appeal. And ‘Spindrift – Whitby‘ painted in the summer, but of a February trip. So cold and bright. The sea was amazing that day. I do love Whitby…

I think I love the paintings best when they capture something about the temperature or the day that I can’t quite define. Usually I don’t quite know how it happened so I can’t repeat it! My paintings are full of happy accidents and sometimes the paint just does what it wants to do. At Open Studios, people often ask if I do classes. I do now have the space in the mill studio, but I need to first work out how the paintings have happened before I can show anyone else!

I’ll be working on print orders this week and next, so it’s not too late for print orders. I send prints using FedEx, so these are not being affected by the postal strikes. For everything else I am endeavoring, on principle, to support my local post office. But we’re sending out as promptly as we can to avoid the backlog.

The last day for print orders will be midday on December 14th.
For all other orders, by midday on December 16th.
This last date is what’s recommended on the Royal Mail website.

Looking forward to 2023, I have been working hard on work for a new exhibition called ‘HOME’, which will open at Heart Gallery in late April. I plan about 10 paintings, all of the Calder Valley. I haven’t had an exhibition at Heart since ‘Crags and Fells’ 2018, and 2023 will mark 10 years since my very first exhibition with Alison in April of 2013! It’s been lovely to gt back to hills and washing, and favourite views.These are the two I’ve finished so far:

From Birchcliffe, down towards The White Lion. And Gibson Mill back in the hot, sunny July of this year. I’m also attempting an overly ambitious project of a Hebden Bridge A-Z! I began to learn wood engraving this year (It’s something I have always wanted to do) and the only way to get good at it is practice! So, I figured I had 26 chances to improve. The rules I have set myself are that:

• I can only use practice blocks. These are small blocks, usually around 5 x 7cm. Bigger blocks are easier in some ways, but also quite expensive and therefore daunting to hone your skills on!
• I don’t have to do the letters in order
• I don’t have to think of an ‘X’
• I am not allowed to do a letter more than once. I have to finish and move on!

This is what I have so far! A LOT of letters left to do, so I’ll just have to see how I get on. I am currently working on ‘H’ for Heptonstall. I’ve also started two Heptonstall paintings this week. When the valley was full of fog last week, I walked up the hill and out of it to blue skies up there!

I think that’s quite enough to be going on with. Well done if you’ve read all the way to the end. I really should do this little and often, rather than a quartely essay…

Thank you everyone for your support this year. I genuinely don’t mean just the buying of things, but coming to exhibitions, the studio or events. Commenting and sharing on social media. Emails. Whether you’re enjoying an original, a print, a card or a Jpeg – the fact that you’re enjoying it means the world to me!

For Christmas this year my Dad bought me a beautiful book of Eric Ravillious Wood Engravings…

Dad and I are both huge Ravillious fans, but the book of little engravings were a revelation. Above are my favourite three: I love the tiny, styalised perfection of them! I’ve long wanted to get back to some kind of proper, formal print making. As a textile deigner I did all sorts of silk screen and block printing at college – I loved it all. But once you set up on your own, print making can be quite a tricky thing to access, so I’ve let it all lie.

Wood engraving, as opposed to wood block printing, is the engraving of the short, end-grain of hard wood blocks with small chisels (not scooping tools, like with lino). It’s hard – in every way. But I find the restriction of scale very appealing. Since I was small, producing little watercolours on the backs of old tickets, and filling little perfume sample bottles with beads for dolls house cupboards, working in minature has always appealed!

I digress… So – in May I went away for 4 days to learn. Cherryburn is a small National Trust owned property near Prudhoe. It is the birth place ot Sir Thomas Bewick – an english artist and naturalist. And the father of wood engraving. The course was held there – in the long room, surrounded by Bewicks wood blocks in glass cases.

There were 10 on the course. All lovely people. Some very talented engravers; lecturers; professional illustrators. I was the dunce at the bottom of the class with absolutely no experience of wood engraving. It was nice in a way, to go with no pre-concieved ideas or expectations. I didn’t even know how to hold my tools! The course was led by Chris Daunt – an excellent, encouraging, and calm teacher, and creator of beautiful engravings.

We were sent down to the river to draw. Cherryburn is on the Tyne – it’s an incredibly beautiful bit of the country.

Wood engraving is daunting! Not least because the blocks are expensive (they are such beautiful things in themselves) and any mark you make cannot be undone. But the only way to learn is to do it. A peculiar thing happens to time when you start wood engraving. You begin, and when you next look up, hours have passed. There were 10 of us in that room, sat completely absorbed in our tiny wooden blocks, the only sound coming from Bewicks Grand father clock in the corner.

My first ever wood engraving!

I learned so much! And there were definitely marks I made at the beginning that I wouldn’t have made by the end. But all in all, I was rather proud of my first attempt and gave the print to my Dad for Father’s Day.

It will take YEARS – possibly a life a time – to get good at this. So I’m at the very beginning of a journey. I loved it though, and came away desperate to do more.

After the course I had ‘Whispering Ruins’ to complete for Chantry House Gallery, so it’s not really until this week of unplanned isolation that I’ve been able to carry on.

In April 2023 I will be exhibiting with Heart Gallery again. The exhibition is to be called ‘Home’. It will be my first exhibition at home since 2018. One of many (overly ambitious) ideas is to produce a Hebden Bridge A – Z in tiny wood engravings. I plan to only use small practice blocks so that I can learn and ruin them as I go. And I figure that over the course of 26 letters, I will learn and improve. Whilst at home with covid this week (and not in the South of France with my husband, and without children as I should have been!) I’ve started my tiny but ambitious project.

Stuck at home I’ve just been hand burnishing my prints, with varying results. But I did find this beautiful old book press which I’m planning to get set up to print my blocks.

So this is the beginning of something new and completely different. But just to prove that I have no intention of painting any less, I also completed this yesterday:

My new exhibition ‘Whispering Ruins’ is opening this coming Saturday, June 18th 2022 at Chantry House Gallery in Ripley. I’ve painted 10 new pieces, all inspired by North Yorkshire abbeys.

I took these two lovely girls (my daughter and her friend) to York for the day in May. I sat and drew in the Museum Gardens while they explored the shops, and then we met up for cake! Not bad for a day technically ‘at work’ was it?

I think this (above) might be my favourite of the new paintings. They were cutting the grass when I was drawing, so for me this is full of the smell of freshly cut grass and spring. The cake was good too…

This one – ‘Easby to Richmond’ – is the first painting I started in the new set. But it had a long rest in the middle when it learned to behave. That happens with some paintings and I don’t know why. The York one almost painted itself and took a week. This one took from October to May!

These are two I completed after a half term jaunt to Staithes. We left the Calder Valley as it was flooding and fled to the East coast where it was fiercely cold, but the skies were blue!

I wanted to call this one ‘Rievaulx Abbey is closed on Wednesdays’ but I was overruled. I think it would have been valid; had the winter opening hours not caught me out I would have gone in (eaten cake) and drawn the trees framed through the arches. As it was I had to find a different viewpoint. I like this: it’s from the lane that runs alongside the river. With imagination, artistic licence and squishing, you can have Rievaulx Abbey and the Tuscan temple from Rievaulx Terrace in the same viewpoint. The tiles (and I do so love tiles) are taken from tiles in the little museum at Rievaulx (I drew them when I last went).

So now all the work has been proofed for prints, and is at the framers being made ready. The exhibition opens on Saturday 18th June, at 10am. It will be up until August 28th. Details and prices of all the paintings are on the Chantry House Gallery website.

I’ve not posted for ages! It’s not good enough – I’m sorry. I’ve been working, just not blogging, and now I’ve an exhibition coming up. It opens on Saturday June 18th!

Back in the Autumn I escaped in Daphne (Daphne is my yellow Fiat 500. It’s impossible not to be happy when driving her) for a couple of drawing days in North Yorkshire. My friend Emma, owner of Chantry House Gallery suggested ages ago (in the first lock down I think) that she’d love me to have an exhibition of North Yorkshire Abbeys. So I had a route and a plan and an abbeys wish list…

I’ve never been to Byland Abbey before. It’s an incredible place! The day was rather grey, but the autumn colours spectacular – in their last throws before the November gales took the leaves. It’s a very silent place – very still. I love tiles and Byland has the most beautiful, and most complete, tiled floors I think.

I’m painting two pictures of Byland. This one is finished. The tiles merging into the autumn colours inspired by the mosaics inside.

This one is well under way. If I’m honest, I’m saving the tile designs in the bottom section for a treat, when something else is proving tricky. They will be a joy to do.

After Byland I drove to Rievaulx, then the next day to Jervaulx – again, somewhere I’ve never been. It’s beautifully wild and overgrown. Unkempt in a romantic way; I can see why people love it. I went early in the morning so I had the early morning light. It was very cold so i couldn’t draw for long before my fingers went numb, but I had the place to myself:

From Jervaulx to Fountains Abbey. One is nearly finished. One just in the early stages…

So that kept me busy up until February when the weather was fit for venturing out again. We escaped Hebden Bridge as the roads were flooding at February half term, and went to Staithes. There’s nothing like sea air to blow the cobwebs away, even if our rented cottage had run out of heating oil, so we spent our first evening huddled around a fan heater, and we slept in hats and jumpers.

I did speedy drawing in high winds and, at one point, standing in the sea! I’ve had a picture in my head for ages, and needed to work out the composition.

And then this! The Abbey was actually closed to the public in the morning because the winds were so strong. Again – speedy drawing in freezing wind!

Hattie and I are off to York on Monday. Me to draw, and her to meander. It’s a teacher training day and she loves York (as do I!) so we might allow ourselves afternoon tea in Bettys if the drawings go well.

One last thing. This exhibition needs a title! North Yorkshire Abbeys sounds very formal. I wondered about Silent Ruins – but maybe that sounds melancholy. Something that encompasses stillness, sometimes wildness, and the vastness of the decaying archticture. If you have any ideas, please let me know!

I am auctioning this painting of Shibden Hall on Sunday, with all proceeds going to the DEC (Disasters Emergency Committee – Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal). I know that many artists have been selling their work, much of it on the sunflower theme. I finished this earlier this month and realised it was in the Ukrainian colours. It’s a tenuous link, but I’m sticking to it! Like everyone else, I’m desperate to do something to help.

This little painting is called ‘Evening at Shibden’. In inks, acrylics, watercolour, gouache, gold thread and gold leaf. There’s a great deal of talk locally about the delayed Anne Lister birthday celebrations (she would have been 230 last April) which made me think of an evening gathering at Shibden Hall. The lights from the house spilling out onto the lawn. The sounds of talking and laughing coming from inside. Anne’s library light is on; perhaps she’s escaped up there for some peace and quiet.

You can only see a jpeg here, so can I just add that I’m rather proud of this little painting. It glows!

The painted area is 27 x 27cm. I will have it framed (double mounted, simple pale oak frame) for anyone that bids in the UK. But if I send it overseas it will be safer to send it unframed. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it! I will liaise with whoever buys it about delivery, and split the cost. I hope that people think this is reasonable.

I will launch the auction on my Facebook page on Saturday morning (19th March) – just add your bid in the comments to the post. The auction will end at 9pm UK time on Sunday evening so please do not bid after this time as it will not be considered!

I know that not everyone is on Facebook, but it’s where I have the greatest reach. If you would like to bid, but not on Facebook, then please just email me and I will add your bid.

I’d be very grateful if you could share this with anyone you think might be interested.

Thank you so much to everyone who came along on Saturday September 25th to Bankfield Museum. It was such a lovely day.

I am incredibly grateful to the to the staff at the Museum, and they must be grateful that I wasn’t the one wielding the drill to equally space and hang 42 framed pieces, no two the same size!

It took a couple of days to hang in the end, but it’s a stunning setting, and I still can’t believe I filled that huge space.

The Museum is stocking The Nightingale Project book and hand-finished prints of many of the new pieces. I shall do my best to keep them well stocked for the next few months!

My daughter Hattie took these photos. I’m seriously impressed….

The exhibition shows 8 large landscapes. Three small Cliffs paintings. And 41 Nightingale Project pieces:

And it is up until March 2022! So please go and see it.

Bankfield Museum is open Tuesday to Saturday, from 10am until 4pm. There is a cafe, a really excellent costume exhibition (I’ve been told that Bankfield have a costume archive second only to the V&A. It really is a treasure of a place). It’s also near a nice park, in case deals need to be made with small visitors.

My exhibition at Bankfield Museum opens in a few weeks time. I’ve been working on new landscapes this summer, inspired by long anticipated day trips out of the valley! We went to Malham Cove…

To the bookshop at Saltaire, and then the park with a picnic.

For Afternoon Tea at Betty’s in Ilkley on my birthday. But we had to earn it first with a walk on Ilkley Moor.

I live near some very beautiful places. There have been many a trip to Hardcastle Crags over the last year…

There are more, but you’ll have to come to Bankfield and see them. I will be posting full details (including sizes and prices) of all the works going on sale the week before the exhibition opens. This will include all of the landscapes, and most of the Nightingale Project paintings.

I bought out a book in July; a kind of lock-down project about collecting trees and making the best of a stange time for my children. The Nightingale Project pictures will all be displayed together on one huge wall. I’m very excited about this. In the midst of the project I would lay them all out on the floor with me standing in the middle, and then make a little movie on my phone to send to my Mum and my sisters.

After a while there were too many for my floor. I intended to make 30 and I eventually stopped at 43, so I’ve never seen them all together. Some of them are very small. A lot of the art works had to be portable.

The book will be available, along with prints of much of the new work.

The exhibition will open at 10am with refreshments and speeches taking place at 2pm.

All works are for sale. Works will be available to purchase in person from 10am and by phone (01422 352334) at 12 noon.

Everyone welcome for the launch, please RSVP with the amount of people attending by Monday 20 September to museums@calderdale.gov.uk