Stormy weather

The last of the Fenland Skyscape series is now complete and I have to admit that I’m quite sorry to have reached the end of the project. As always working on a subject for a couple of months makes you aware of new ideas that seem to turn over in the grey matter with great rapidity, my problem is remembering them for later reference. Write it down or make a note in your notebook says the Boss. Ever pragmatic! Three new projects are going to start one for our son and another landscape series and I’m hoping that our daughter can get hold of a couple of wooden wine boxes for me so that I can combine wood and linocuts together. The third, well, I have lots of offcuts of lino and paper so some fish are in the pipeline there and they will, if all goes well, be cut and printed quickly a little like a sketch but with cutting tools instead of a pen, pencil or brush. Back to the subject of this print, inspired, if that’s the word, by the weather and the reeds that grow in the dykes, drains and rivers all over Fenland. By this time of year they’ve died back and pretty well all of the leaves have been stripped away by the weather leaving the stalks swaying, tapping and rustling in the wind. They look a little like very thin bamboo and I suppose they must be a distant relation but they’re either bleached to a straw colour or black where they meet the water. Hard to believe that in a couple or three months the banks will be a sea of bright green with fresh reed growth.