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

Tidying has begun in earnest. Hebden Bridge Open Studios is back! And I shall be opening from 11am – 5pm on July 9th, 10th and 11th.

88 artists are opening their studios to show you where they work and what they create! We so missed this last year – It’s great to be able to do it again. Have a look and see who’s open at the weekend. The website has lots of links and images now, so you can plan your own trail.

We had a delivery this week, from Henry Ling…

The company was recommended by a friend of my Mums, who designs artist’s books for exhibitions. He’d said “well, if she wants the very best, she should go to Henry Ling”. It’s been nerve wracking – selling a book I’ve not seen. But they are beautiful! Even better than I had hoped.

Many of the pre-orders have been packed up over the weekend. Daniel has been on book wraps. The twins have been on building the postcard packs…

Pre-orders for collection can either be picked up at Open Studios, or from Monday July 5th. Just email me and we can sort out a time this week

You can still pre-order The Nightingale Project ahead of the Open Studios launch on Friday 9th July. Pre-ordered copies will come signed and with a pack of 10 postcards (my favourite images from the book) as a thank you. Alternatively, my local and lovely Heart Gallery can also take your pre-order. Pop in and see Alison or Ness there before Friday…

The book officially goes on sale on Friday 9th July! Come and see it. 2022 Calendars have also been delivered this week, and I’ve been gilding and stitching this years batch of little printers proofs…

Things will have to be a little different this year – I’m sure you’ll understand. Obviously face masks / sanitiser / social distancing. Some of the studio groups have one way systems in place to keep you safe. Some people’s work space is small so they may have to limit numbers. For my part, I think 2 people (as well as me), or one bubble can come in at a time, so you may have to wait outside. I’ll put chairs in the courtyard and, if the weather is dry, I’ll put as much work outside as I can. We’re all double jabbed and will make it as safe as we possibly can. A couple of people have been in touch, worried about either having to queue or it being very busy. I can make a few appointments available on Friday and Saturday, after 5pm if you would prefer this. Just email me and let me know.

I hope you can come!

I’ve been very quiet for a while – sorry about that. Now that the children are back at school I have a little more time and have been making the most of it. The Nightingale Project, which I started a year ago, has gained momentum in recent weeks. Many of the paintings were just scribbles and notes, and had to be left while i concentrated on the paintings for Toffee Town, and then Christmas orders. And then, well, home schooling slowed production too. Though my Maths has improved!

Anyway – as the paintings have been coming together, I’ve made a definite decision about what to to with them:

I’ve been putting the paintings and the lists of things we saw in chronological order. From March 2020 to March 2021 I can see the seasons change, and it’s been good to look back and remember some of the lovely times we’ve had. Small scale, and very local – but quite precious.

This is my latest group – some are not quite finished…

They’re all a mix of inky paper collage, inks, watercolour, threads, gold leaf. They’re not literal, but maybe each one is like a diary entry – a collection of things that we saw or heard on a particular day. Some trees I photographed every month – like the twisted willow down at Hardcastle Craggs. It’s such a beautiful shape that it’s lost in the summer. In October it suddenly looked like a Kay Nielsen tree, so that’s the season I chose (If you don’t know Kay Nielsen’s work then do look him up).

I’ve found a book binder that specialises in art books and have started working out the details; choosing cloth cover colours and paper quality. I’m producing this myself and I want to do it right!

For the text I played around with all sorts of layouts and lettering but nothing felt right. So I’ve taken the very practical and sensible decision that every page is going to be handwritted with a Copperplate dip pen…

There will be over 30 trees when this is done, and I still really want to present them all together. One huge joyful wall of rich colour and delicate detail. It’s all been about finding beauty in the small things. With galleries and museums all closed it’s not been a good time to sort this part of the project out, but I’m determined to find somewhere. Ideally to coincide with the launch of the book.