I began silk screen printing in the 1970’s at an evening class, making cards, printing on to fabric for curtains, cushions and tote bags, and printing directly onto t-shirts and sweatshirts. When I changed career and needed an A-level I gained it in screen printing.

I specialised in Art and Design and Textile Design as part of my teacher training, extending my skills as a mono-printer, working from black and white photographs by Diane Arbus. My focus then was elderly people in care homes who were distressed by dementia and other mental illness. I looked at bog burial bodies in museums and thought how ironic it was that those sacrificed (murdered) became the most famous after death. I printed the contours of their bodies onto hand-made paper to represent the organic nature of their remains and used knowledge of their last meal in my creations.

As a primary teacher, and then a university lecturer, I had no time for creative pursuits or printing activities. It has only been since retiring that I have returned to printing. By joining a printing group that meets once a month I learned collagraph and intaglio techniques. I dabbled a little with lino printing but since March 2019 I started to silkscreen print again.

The patient work of carefully cutting stencils that began 40 years ago has been resurrected with sharper tools and poorer eyesight! I enjoy combining imaginary and realistic features of archaeology and geology, integrating my reading of conference papers and recent research to my thinking. I am interested in scientific techniques and the use of data to analyse and understand whatever is being investigated. The forensic nature of this stimulates and sustains my work.

Lincolnshire prehistory – being married to an archaeologist, and through my involvement as Educational Consultant with the Euromed II TEMPER (Training, Education, Management and Prehistory in the Mediterranean) Project, I have been interested in how archaeologists read material evidence from investigations. Their interpretation of changes in the landscape over many thousands of years are derived from analyses of peat, pollen, paleo-channels and pottery. The Lincolnshire fens are an organic record of ice age deposits, incursions from the sea, changes in climate and the marine and terrestrial life.

I am fascinated by seasonal occupation in intertidal zones, cultural burial practices and what survives after death. My intaglio and collagraph prints communicate human activity in the Bronze Age. Mounds of barrows emerge in different planes, the verticality of the topography and textures of human activity left by our ancestors an imagined pattern.

Jersey geology – over the last few years I’ve looked at rocks, raised beaches, geological maps and extant volcanic activity with new eyes. I’ve ‘read’ the complex evidence of heat and pressure exerted many millions of years ago at L’Etacq, with exposures on the beach and cliffs of mineral veins, wave-cut platforms and sedimentary shale. In contrast Anne Port Bay illustrates a different range of rocks with rhyolite flows overlying ignimbrite.

My silk screen prints of selected rocks evolve through a process of sketching from photographs using colour pencils. I intensify the colour range, often in imaginary shades, endeavouring to illustrate each stone correctly in terms of its marks and grain. I recall the terminology used in geological literature such as ‘cross-bedding’, ‘load-casting’ and ‘boudinage’ to accentuate the textures and colour combinations. Collagraph plates combine scraps of wallpaper, masking tape, parcel tape, Sellotape, aluminium foil with carved and cut areas.

It makes me contemplate what the essence of my existence is and what will survive me in a thousand years’ time.

From October 2019 until August 2021 I was unable to print, partly due to Covid and the restrictions of lockdown but mainly because of emergency medical interventions and the necessary period of recovery and recuperation. The enforced interruption to my artistic practice didn’t stop me reading or thinking about my interest in Deep Time. By virtual attendance at the ‘Europe’s Lost Frontiers’ Society of Antiquaries conference, and subsequent discussions about paleo-environmental deposits on Doggerland, my contemplation of cores taken from under the North Sea, east of the Lincolnshire coast, looking at diatom and pollen records, kick-started an imaginary landscape.

The complexity of dating and mapping the changes of inundation, marine conditions and species of flora and fauna requires a strong grasp of time, climatic change and human interaction with the environment. To represent this visually on bar charts showing chronological change over millennia and interpret the microscopic evidence of plants, algae or insects needs specialist knowledge. Specialists understand emerging patterns and may use artists to visualise the environment during seasonal change or millennial incursions.

For me, extrapolating the hard facts and translating them into a shifting, impermanent picture led me to look at glacial moraines, fossilised tectonic shifts from the Miura peninsula in Japan and maps of ladyfinger lakes in Ontario. Submarine landslides cause enormous movement of water and rock, discussed in papers about the Storegga tsunami evidenced by the resultant rise of sea levels. Stencils based on geological illustration overlain with magnified plant remains gave the opportunity of scaling up and scaling down. Making mirrored collagraph and intaglio plates of the east and west bank of the new road in Miura filled a creative urge.

Professional Background

• 1992 BEd (Hons) Bath College of HIgher Education (Bath Spa University)
• 2002 MA in Primary Education, UCL – Institute of Education, London
• 2003 Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher and Professional Education, Institute of Education, University of London
• 2005 Registered Practitioner of The Higher Education Academy. Reference: 29139
• 2011-2016 Art and Design specialism lead for Primary PGCE course, UCL – Institute of Education, London.