From snow to rainforest

Took our annual pilgrimage to Eden Project yesterday, it is only an hour or so drive from our house and we like to go in January with our old friends for a spot of ice skating and to heat up in the tropical bio domes!

Yesterday I needed to take LOTS of photos of olive trees in the Mediterranean Dome for a new commission I am working on for Olive Tree Therapies  a gorgeous new beauty salon in Exeter (more of that another day) but I also did lots of snapping in the other, bigger dome.

Snowy day on the Moors

I love it when it snows and always get very excited; as do my children! We watched the rest of the country get snow….indeed it did snow in Exeter, but it didn’t settle. So by this morning we were desperate to find some snow.

We didn’t have to look far, Castle Drogo  was a winter wonderland today and we had a great time sledging in the deserted peace of the magical castle on Dartmoor.

The light was really unusual today. I often find this in the South West, there is something in the damp misty air which transfuses light in a unique, sometimes eerie way and I got to take lots of photos, which to me is the modern day sketch book. I take lots of photos and refer back to them often.

New directions for 2013

The Christmas and rush and New Year lull have passed and I am slowly working out what this year has in store!

I have a couple of great commissions to get started on and lots of exhibitions lined up for later in the year, but this week is all about printing on glass. I have been experimenting with this for sometime now and I have joined a print artist collective at TAAG in Teignmouth to help me get back on my printing feet (its been a long time since I used these techniques).

I am quite pleased with some of the results, see what you think, they are direct mono prints, lino cut prints and block prints using polystyrene and foam.