This book depicts a woman wandering a forest at night holding a candle that illuminates the ivy-clad trees. A crescent moon hangs in a star filled sky. As usual there are 12 illustrated pages, six either side of the central spread.
I have a luxury, black, gift box in which to send it or, if required, I could get a box frame especially made.
I’m inclining towards drawing mysterious women in the landscape – I’m in a phase bordering on fantasy and dream! There may well be more of this sort of thing to come :)
I am very happy to have a couple of artworks in the lovely shop Objet Trouvé in the nearby village of Alfriston. Objet Trouvé describes itself as ‘a distinctive arts and curiosities shop/gallery’. It’s a treasure trove of wonderful things.
The main artwork is a box-framed altered book – Badgers beneath the Moon. I feel proud that it’s in the window of the gallery at the moment:
An object — often utilitarian, manufactured, or naturally occurring — that was not originally designed for an artistic purpose, but has been repurposed in an artistic context.
Pablo Picasso was the first to use the term publically. I guess that altered books come under this definition – I haven’t thought of it in that way before.
I’m hoping to have more of my altered books framed in a similar way and will continue to explore using found materials in my artworks.
Since the end of September I’ve had some artwork up on an art wall in the Discovery Centre at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve. These include artworks I created for my Pett Level Project along with a few others.
Here is a photo of the wall soon after it was set up:
Below are a few of the artworks including Lost to the Sea, a pen and ink A2 sized drawing and Between the Tides, a mixed media picture.
Lost to the Sea – pen and ink
Two pole like trees tower over a star-encrusted shore where gulls dance. Lost to the Sea refers to the forests that once fringed the coast, but disappeared when the sea rose and the UK became an island about 8,000 years ago.
Between the Tides – mixed media
I was curious about the channels between the mudflats, what fish came in with the incoming tides? Dabs? Between the Tides is an experimental image that doesn’t quite work from a composition point of view, but it was interesting to play with mixed media – collage, pen and ink, acrylic paint and watercolour pencil.
Also up on the wall are Redshank, a papercut layered picture in pen and ink and watercolour pencil and Over the Mudfalts, a mixed media artwork with little flying black tailed godwits positioned on thin wires:
Earlier this year I visited the Crypt Gallery here in Seaford and was delighted to see an exciting exhibition of sketchbooks by local people. This was the result of the 2024 SCIP (Sussex Contemporary Illustrators and Printmakers) Sketchbook Challenge. I decided that I’d like to take part in this year’s challenge.
To take part I need to raise at least £25 to have my sketchbook included in the show next March and need to do my best to fill the A5 sketchbook I was given. I feel ambitious and have decided to try and fill two sketchbooks, aiming to raise £50.
SCIP is a local charity based in the Crypt Gallery. They offer free art workshops and events for communities around Susasex – adults and children – often those who would not otherwise be able to access the arts. I’ve seen some amazing exhibitions – for example a rainforest room decorated with wondrous papercut animals and plants organised by SCIP for local school children as part of The Garden Show,.
If you’d like to sponsor me I’ve created a Local Giving Page. All money raised will go to providing free access to creativity and culture to children, young people and adults across Sussex.
I thought it would be a good idea to write about some of the new products I have listed in my website and Etsy shops. I don’t always like just promoting my stuff on here, but I’ve moved away from writing a blog for a while, as I wonder who reads blogs these days. I miss writing it though, so I’m going to make more of an effort, even if it’s just for myself.
But anyway, the new products: I have a brand new badger tote bag available.
Badger Tote Bag
I also have a little badger tin. Inside the tin is a tiny concertina strip featuring badgers on one side and moon phases on the other:
Mini Badger Tin
Badger Tin with Badger Strip
I’ve made a few little box frames with original pen and ink scenes. There’s a deer one and a fox one. The badger one has recently sold, but I’ll show it anyway:
Fox at Dawn
Badger Beneath the Moon
Under a Crescent Moon
I do enjoy making these little layered scenes. These days I use off-white card, which is gentler on the eye, and I’m experimenting with covering the frames either with paper, such as print-outs of old maps, or with paint. I’m used to using acrylic paint on wood, but not used to combining it with pen and ink in the same artwork. I’m still working at this.
Also in my shops are little pen and ink originals:
The Owl and the Snake
Young Badger in the Brambles
The Owl and the Snake was inspired by a recent holiday on Crete where we heard a lot of Scops owls and hoped to see a snake (as it is the Year of the Snake!)
Since visiting the ancient sunken forest off the coast at Pett Levels in 2019, I’ve been fascinated by how it must have been 6000 years ago in the Mesolithic when it was a live, flourishing forest and we were still hunter-gathers. Over a period of time I’ve been working gently on a Pett Levels Project inspired by this section of coastline.
Anyone reading my blog will probably know how much I like trees, woods and forests and that includes ‘ghost forests’. For this project I’m exploring this ancient, prehistoric forest through words, artist books, movement and other art forms. Below is a selection of art pieces I’ve created so far:
inspired by the 900,000 year old footprints revealed off the coast at Happisburgh in Norfolk in 2013, I decided to create a footprint using local clay and found natural materials – curlew feathers, moss, beetle wing cases, bones, snail shells etc. Inside the footprint on handmade paper I’ve placed the words of a simple poem. I’ve titled the artwork Ancestor Gwen as Gwen is the oldest word from Europe for woman that I could find, a Proto-Indo-European word. I could also call it ‘Ancestor Sylvia’ as ‘Sylvia’ is from the Latin word, ‘silva’, for forest.
My small sketchbook is a mish mash of ideas – photos, handmade papers, pen and ink drawings, words, builders’scrim and stitching.
I had to include an altered book – of course! This one was created after a visit last year to the Bialowieza Forest in Poland. I’ve included it in the project because the forest is ancient and the last remnant of a much larger forest that extended across Europe and may have linked to the Pett Levels forest before the sea rose after the last ice age about 11,000 years ago. (This altered book is currently on display in Gallery North, Hailsham, as part of their Into the Wild exhibition.)
Here is a little clip of a movement video I’m making. Two worlds, the world of trees and world of shore overlap. The tree video I filmed in the wild garden of our previous house. The video is as much about the loss of trees from my home life as it is about the loss of forest at Pett Levels. I now live – temporarily I hope – in a town with few trees.
More Than Hunter Now page spreadMore Than Hunter Now page spread
Sketchbook drawings
I’m working on a booklet/zine about a hunter hunting a deer in this ghost forest during the Mesolithic. I’m calling it More Than Hunter Now. The top two images above are all I’ve drawn so far. Below are a couple of pen and ink doodle ideas in a slightly different style that I might develop.
I’ll be continuing with this project and hope to display some or all of it this coming October at the Discovery Centre at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve.
Last year I was approached by a book publisher to design a cover for a new book set in the world of Alice in Wonderland. They wanted me to create an altered book that could be developed into a cover. Sadly, for me, the cover was rejected and they used another – very good – altered book artist, Isobelle Ouzman (if you don’t know her work, do check her out).
Anyway, I thought I’d share my Alice (or rather ‘Alyce’) altered book.
I can understand why it was rejected – too busy for a cover design. I was following a brief, but with limited guidance. Nevermind.
Now I’ve decided to sell it.
There are three illustrated pages including the top page. Below these there is a deepening, blue-inked hole that has been cut into the book (the actual book I’ve used is a secondhand Alice in Wonderland edition). I may decide to continue the illustration over the left hand page.
The hole represents a pond and it goes quite deep into the book. The final pages of the pond are unillustrated.
Below is my ‘cover’ minus the title and author’s name. Perhaps I’ll make a card out of it?
The altered book is available to buy in my website shop and on Etsy, or contact me if you’re interested.
I’ve been quiet on here for a while, occupied with projects that I can’t talk about just yet. But here is one I can – another altered book I’ve titled Returning to the Garden.
With this book I wanted to stray away slightly from my purely wildlife themed books and feature a woman from a previous century wandering the grounds of an old house. The older I get the more interested I become in the past – from prehistory to my own past – and that includes the time of Jane Austen, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
And my interest in the dress has returned – there’s a woman in a long dress among the pen and ink trees. I came across the work of the artist Victoria Brookland, who exhibits at the Masham Gallery. From the gallery I bought some postcards of her artworks and then a little book titled Wearer Unknown.
Victoria Brookland postcards and book
I love her imaginative and somewhat dark imagery and her bodiless dresses, from which all manner of strange and wonderful beings and things spring. She was interested in the Brontes, while I find myself curious about Jane Austen, especially after seeing Stephanie Smart’s paper dresses at Firle House. that I wrote about here.
The current BBC One drama, Miss Austen, based on the book by Gill Hornby, helps fuel my interest. The series is about letters and I’m intrigued by letters and diaries. I visited Jane Austen’s house in Chawton a few years ago and saw her writing table and notebooks.
Back to my book. It’s called Returning to the Garden as it features a woman wandering the garden of an old house with darkened windows, smoke rising from the chimney. There’s a bonfire lit and a fox creeping the edges. We do not know why the woman is out at night, but I am reminded of how Cassandra Austen, Jane Austen’s sister, was found wandering the garden after reading her dead sister’s letters in the Miss Austen drama series.
I have a new, sepia wildlife calendar for 2025! Hot off the press :)
Featuring a barn owl out at dusk.
it’s A4, opening to A3, in size and has 13 sepia illustrations and month grids including one for January 2026. There are owls, a badger, stoat, hare, buzzard in nests, trees and heathland.
