Having drawn inspiration from my small city garden over many years, it was with some excitement I discovered a new way of creating using it's plant material. Printing with a gel plate is a very different way of working compared to using watercolour - more spontaneous and impulsive. I love the accidental effects and textures that can happen, both using watercolour washes and when printing - where every print pulled reveals a unique and often surprising image.
Gathering leaves and flowers has become another pleasurable routine garden job. The material is then taken to the studio and pressed in a sketch book with newspaper under the enormous weight of the “RHS A-Z of Garden Plants”! Being fascinated by the tiny worlds to be found under a stone, in the centre of a flower or emerging from the soil, I have been inspired to add garden wildlife in the form of butterflies, moths, beetles and bees in watercolour and pencil to some prints. Although the garden is very green and has a pond and several trees, it is in an urban location, so I was amazed one day to see a Hummingbird hawk-moth on my Verbena and of course had to add it to a monoprint. This moth is such an extraordinary creature I could hardly believe what I was looking at - a mouse hummingbird chimera!