More than twenty years ago I purchased a few wood engraving tools and a bag of small ‘practise pieces’ of wood with a view to teaching myself wood engraving. I specialise in collagraph but am also a linocut printmaker and I rather naively thought it would be fairly easy. My first attempt was a hare stretching in the sunlight…it was terrible. I set at the wood using the tools wth no delicacy whatsoever and gouged away at it creating a very rough and ready print. I then got sidetracked and didn’t pick up the tools again until 2012 when Anne Desmet had an exhibition at the Mercer Gallery in Harrogate. It was inspirational and when she ran an introductory workshop, I signed up straight away. I learnt a lot, made a tiny crow on a little piece of boxwood and Anne very kindly sharpened my blunt tools for me. I really enjoyed it but still didn’t get back to engraving.

Then in 2018 I received an enticing email from Fiona Rosher, Museum Manager of the Dales Countryside Museum (DCM). The museum was celebrating the 50 year anniversary of Marie Hartley and Joan Ingleby’s book Life and Tradition in the Yorkshire Dales and she said they had an archive of wood engraving blocks created by Marie Hartley and that she wondered if I’d be interested in printing them for the museum for use in exhibitions. I was surprised that she asked me as my specialty is intaglio printmaking but I was intrigued. You can read the full story HERE. It resulted in a much bigger, funded project called Ink Inspiration and I fell in love with Marie’s gorgeous blocks, the majority still as perfect as the day she cut them around ninety years ago. I vowed that in the future I would create some wood engravings of my own.

In 2023 Fiona invited me back to exhibit my eight-year ongoing project ‘Within these Walls‘ which was a celebration of hay meadows and included a large installation piece that had been previously created for a barn in Grassington for the Grassington Festival. Wanting to create a new element of work for the show, I thought I’d make 12 prints documenting a calendar year in my neighbour’s meadows showing their traditional methods for managing them and the rhythms of sheep farming. I intended to create wood engravings but, with only six months to create the prints, I got cold feet and instead made twelve highly detailed 5″x7″ linocuts. I tried to make them have a feel of wood engravings and although that is impossible, I am quite surprised by the detail I did manage to get. You can read a post about them HERE

Roll on another three years and here I am, making work for my third (and joint) exhibition at the DCM, Cherish. This is third time lucky and I have proposed a series of collagraphs celebrating priority species birds in the Yorkshire Dales National Park and the habitats that support them. I have also promised a suite of wood engravings! With that in mind, I went on a wonderful 2-day workshop with Angie Lewin at Edinburgh Printmakers last June and managed to finish an engraving of a Lapwing. For my first proper attempt at a ‘picture’, I was fairly pleased but the main thing was that I came away full of enthusiasm and with a nice square piece of lemonwood to work on.

In April this year I took my tools and some blocks to Ålgården (a studio in Sweden where I am a member) and I chose one of my twenty year old practise blocks for my first engraving. I prepared it by colouring it with black drawing ink and then, completely against my usual way of working, I drew a Golden Plover feather from life straight onto the block and carved it. It was such a delicate and slow process and I loved it.

Spurred on by this success, I decided to plan a ‘proper print’ and designed a square image of a Lapwing and her chick for my lovely piece of lemonwood. The whole process from design to cutting, taking trial proofs and making adjustments until I had a print that I was satisfied with took about two days. I really enjoy the whole process. It suits my love of fine detail, forces me to slow right down and I get completely absorbed in the engraving.

I’ve since completed another engraving and am about to embark on a further one. I’ll be back with the next instalment of this venture to talk about Skylarks and two very different prints.