
The last print of an experimental series of three, first Blackthorn, then Laburnum and the final one is a Flowering Cherry. The Boss and I love these trees and, like all things that flower spectacularly, they see to be here one minute and gone the next although if we don’t get any high winds there’s a sort of upside down tree on the grass below in the form of fallen blossom. The print involved more experimental cutting and the use of colour with four printings alone for the blossom, but what’s life without a little experimentation? The focus of my prints changs now because it looks like I have a book to illustrate about farming in Suffolk one hundred and fifty years ago although the precise time span will be confirmed this weekend and anyway it’s going to be a really interesting exercise. That project looks as if it will be followed by another book about Kent and fishing the flatlands on the Northern Kent coast an area that is not unlike the Norfolk Fenland where we live. Interesting times. I’ve also got some Terrier woodcut prints to produce, but not quite life-size and some woodcut landscapes of the North Yorkshire Moors where I lived for some of the time when I was a child. Life is going to get busy. Very busy.