I am a keen beach go-er living on the Atlantic coast of North Devon, a perfect end to the day is a swim, wander or even BBQ on the top of the boulder bank, a marvelous spot for watching the light, tide, natural world on one of the fastest longest tidal ranges edging the Atlantic Ocean. I am captivated by the shore line, the ever changing light, mood, and skies: different every visit.
I am developing a multimedia media practice: oil on monotype prints – I’m calling them them ‘fake paintings’ F.P. , written where an edition number would usually be on a multiple print. I HATE to waste any materials and have been making monotypes for almost 20 years, to use up the last bits of rolled out ink, reductive surfaces and contact lifted drawings, unique unpredictable prints.
IMAGES Right: ANGEL ABOVE THE BOULDER BANK; Below Left SUPER LOW TIDE; right SUMMER STORM
I return to thematic elements – the doves, the joy of the landscapes that surround me. A few new oil on monotype works are available to buy through Art Maker UK – online gallery
A growing collection of works, please get in touch to learn more, where pieces are exhibited, or to come along for a studio visit!
F.P is reflecting their reception by the Royal Academy: printmaking as an Art form wasn’t accepted until 1909, 140 years after the Summer Exhibition was established. Monotypes, ‘the painterly print’, championed by the likes of William Blake and Edgar Degas, although a process dating back to the Rennaisance, are made by working into an inked smooth surface, one impression or pull can be made and a second ghost image sometimes successfully drawn from the plate. I am endlessly fascinated by creative process, investigation into histories of human expression, more info here: rhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotyping
The drawn /scratched /wetted inked plate is printed on damp paper using an etching press. The compression of the fibres means oil paint can be added in thin glazes to add colour, new features and narrative to the prints. The compression is like a primed surface. They are much faster than oil painting and wonderfully unpredictable – expressive and unique – the mirroring of the drawn image to the printed paper is mysterious and enables the media to dictate the finished outcome, fluid and freeing. The process develops a sense of flow -meditative and without constraint of other more process driven media I work with.
COLLABORATION
Rosie and Red Art and Leather oak gall ink on parchment
A new adventure for 2025 – we decided to do some collaborative work, my training in Archaeological illustration enables a confidence in working with pen and ink. A small collaborative exhibition will be a part of the 2025 Created Festival at The Big Sheep near Bideford, Sept 20th/ 21st 2025.
We are also taking part in the HERITAGE CRAFT FESTIVAL at Coldharbour Mill near Tiverton – more info here: https://www.coldharbourmill.org.uk/whats-on/
The suggestion of a collaboration led to utilising some VERY beautiful parchments – made from deer, goat and sheep downstairs from my studio in Reds Raw Taw Tan’s micro tannery. I researched working on parchment and wanting some kind of authenticity we visited Salisbury Cathedral and the Magna Carta, on sheep parchment and the Mappa Mundi, on vellum – in Hereford Cathedral.
Wanting both authenticity of media, a vague hope for the longevity of the thirteenth century articles investigated … I set about making 3 oak gall inks. The Tarka Trail runs past our studios and is riddled with weather beaten oaks, with MANY galls – a perfectly sustainable media!
You can learn more about this process – and have a go at Coldharbour Mill on Tuesday 26th August 2-4.30pm – book through website above. Also running the same kind of thing at Penyschnant on Saturday 6th September, more info soon!
BLOG-ISH
ARTIVISM AND PEACE
I have always been interested in sociological structures and global interactions – I’m living and working in a time of rising political imbalance, there are so many things that influence a makers work. I studied anthropology – and find the divisionist ideology of the 2020s difficult and disturbing. We are all human and need water, food and shelter as a minimum to exist – this simplicity seems to have been lost to power, greed and capitalist modeling that forgets our common humanity.
The first dove piece I made, outside of extensive doodling stimulated by the rainbow and dove with an olive branch, at the end of the biblical story of Noah and the Ark in primary school – was a small dry-point engraving on a zinc plate that was used by the Bailiff of Jersey as a Christmas card in 2004.
I make doves regularly – 3 mono-print cardboard cut original prints, embellished with gold leaf, in response to the heinous, and ongoing horrific, events in the Levant in 2023, available to purchase here: ARTIZAN GALLERY reproduction prints and greetings cards raised some small funds for Save the Children international – seach DOVE in my shop.
I love to adventure and feel that play / experiment and expansion of media is essential to maintaining my creative journey.
Without peace everything feels pretty futile, doves are a gentle artivist action to use my work to voice my pacifist intentions. Please get in touch if you are interested in more dove pieces. Do check out DOVES FOR PEACE. I have donated DONNA NOBIS PACEM (let there be peace) another oil on monotype dove, above right, to their Art auction in Autumn 2025 to raise funds for War Child.
PLASTIC BEACH
Rosie, aged 16, did an Art project on fast food packaging – the bright colours, plasticised logos, the RUBBISH, the waste. In 2012, she collected single use packaging netting from oranges, onion, garlic – the net being reminiscent of the meshed forms and textures investigated in coastal oil paintings. Collagraph prints were developed, exhibited and sold – recycled circular mount board off cuts from a framer, glue and simple relief printing process, circular plates reminiscent of port holes.
In 2016, a friend visited an exhibition Rosie was holding, the friend had just returned from working on a marine research ship – from Plymouth – South Coast England, to South Georgia – south of Argentina. Her role was collecting and recording sea water samples to look for evidence of microplastics. Finding evidence of plastic particulates in the oceans from the top to the bottom of the planet. Rosie’s strange fascination with rubbish, what it’s made of, what it’s reminiscent of, changed radically looking at photographs of the sea water micro plastic slides.
Rosie is a keen beach go-er living on the Atlantic coast of North Devon, plastics feature on visits – pockets, bags, filled with little bits of plastic. PLASTIC BEACH is a developing body of work – connection between net packaging and light light dancing on the surface of the sea, a development of ideas connected to micro plastic scientific marine research slides. Titled with the names of plastics – polythene, PET, nylon etc and the name of a dance – watching the plastic rubbish on the tide is like watching a waltz or tango or rumba. Abstract images – alarming use of complementary colour – alluring, micro- detail, with a dark tale of the microplastics in our global waters.
Rosie believes single use plastics should be banned; human blood samples now often have microplastics in them. This body of work also considers the beauty, tropical shores, the fragility and invisibility of pollution.
This ongoing body of work is an abstract expression of a deep concern for people’s seemingly un-ending addiction to single use plastics. There are currently another 5 prints in this series of work – and more in production. Images available by request. To date these PLASTIC BEACH prints have been shown at the 2024 Venice Biennial, SHIM Art for Social Justice, Disappearing Worlds at Wytchwood Gallery North Yorkshire and Studio Kind Summer Exhibition 2025 Barnstaple North Devon.
FIFTEEN MINUTE BEACH CLEAN
I had a painting flash on the screen as a child – Tony Hearts children’s telly, probably around 1982 – part of the KEEP BRITAIN TIDY campaign – a children’s TV program – I made a poster paint picture of a big yellow street sweep wagon filled with rubbish picked up in a park – well that’s how it remains in my head – the original image long gone, I was 8 years old!
Some things seem to stick – this oil painting FIFTEEN MINUTE BEACH CLEAN is exactly that – a still life kind of assemblage of the plastic detritus I gathered, on the soft round pebbles of Westward Ho! beach. Its an oil on canvas, measuring just over 60x60cm framed.
It is part of the 2025 summer open exhibition at Penychnant – a fantastically beautiful nature and conservation center near Conwy North Wales: https://www.pensychnant.co.uk/
A blog page of new work 2023 -25
Art Grant Aplication
Between April 2023 and January 2024, I spent some time making applicaitons for a grants to further develop my practice to strengthen connections
with my community & local landscape (within North Devon’s UNESCO
Biosphere), enhance the socially engaged aspects of my practice through new
professional relationships, and develop new opportunities for international
connection via the themes of water, rivers & seas. This step-change will lead to
new possibilities to develop multi-partner projects & sustained opportunities for
paid work in my local area.
I am still keen to access any funding opportunities, but have not yet been successful.
Over 12 months, I’ll create a new body of artwork based on the River
Torridge from sea to source – considering contemporary, historical and
archeological records, and allowing seasonal change, weather and activity to
influence my making. To do this, I’ll spend time weekly on-site at the river –
using eco-prints, drawing, photos and conversation with passers-by to record
the water, flora and fauna, pollutants, and human/animal life. These visual
notes/ideas will then be further worked up (in my studio) to produce new and
significant works to share and exhibit (locally & internationally).
To support this, I will:
Grow my relationship with Burton at Bideford – exploring the Permanent
Collection (inc research on Sheila Hutchinson’s 1950s watercolour series From
Source to Sea & Richard Gregory’s 2021 film) and meeting with Burton Art
Gallery & Museum Staff.
Undertake first-hand research of JMW Turner’s North Devon sketchbooks &
paintings (TATE Britain Collection)
Explore the river’s folk tales & archaeological records
Meet with & learn from local foragers & fishermen
Develop new relationships with stakeholder orgs inc Devon Wildlife Trust, RHS
Rosemoor, Surfers Against Sewage, 
Plymouth University, The Resurgence
Trust, Wings SW
Blog & share work-in-progress online
Develop relationship with WaterWalks (Ludwig collective – Rotterdam, NL) &
Collect Art (Tbilisi, Georgia) with support from Plough Arts Centre
Mentoring with Phil Parker & Hilary Beecroft (Founders of Artmakers UK)