Feb has been a super productive month! I’ve been etching some more and doing some more monotype work – which is a lot of fun! I was especially happy as I took a trip to Nottingham to Ratcliffe Power Station (Which is the last active coal powered power station in the country now) to get some more photos to work from. I got some lovely shots including some with big piles of coal that I was very excited about – I am going to be doing some work along this theme for Watersheds Exhibition which will be running this summer at the Storey. So that was great – I made my largest etching to date and 3 a3 mono’s from the photos:
I also followed from last months Blast Beach theme and did a monotype inspired by that alongside a couple of others – i’ve drawn from the last monotype workshop I took and have been experimenting drawing on my prints with charcoal and graphite – very much liking the effect and think its a fantastic idea!
Last of all (Although it was actually the first thing I made this month) is this little etching of Darlington from the 1970’s – I saw a photo online and I couldn’t stop looking at it – the houses dwarfed by the cooling towers – how different it is to todays view. It opened a whole can of worms and I have been finding out more about my own family’s role in industry and my grandads job as a blast furnace man in Consett Steel Works (A place that was demolished before I was born). Finding more photos from this era has been enlightening – and now I’m planning a trip to Port Talbot to see if I can get a sense of the place and how it may have been for my family growing up in a place so dominated by one industry.
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So there you are – February in a nutshell 🙂 Also had the launch of my exhibition at The Quarterhouse which was great, pop down and take a look if you’re passing by!