If you have bought one of my prints or about to buy one, here are some tips on how to frame it. The easiest way is to take it to a reputable framers, as they should do a good job and it takes all the stress and work out of the steps required to frame your print. However this may not always be an option or in your budget. If it’s an art work on paper such as a Lino print, collage, or painting, it’s advisable to get a matt cut using mount board. This not only looks aesthetically pleasing but also acts as a barrier to keep the print from touching the glass. Without it the print might stick to the glass and there is a greater risk that dust might get into in. Do your calculations first so you can buy a frame to fit. The Matt (mount) should sit around the print allowing the edition number, name of the print, and signature to be read. The thickness of the mount should be a thick card about 1.3mm and acid free.
The top and sides of the paper surrounding the print should be the same width at about 5mm – 10mm and the bottom with the title about 10- 20mm depending on the size of the writing.
If you purchase a mount online, calculate the ‘window,’ to include the printed image and this surrounding area.
Ideally the mount will be cut to be the same size on all sides, but it can also be aesthetic to have wider sides and/or bottom. It’s your choice how wide the sides are.
Use mounting tape such as PH7-70 Acid Free Conservation Mount fixing/Frame seal. To fix the print to the mount, following the instructions on the tape box. It will be only fixed to the top of the mount. Like this on both sides at the top.
Use a piece of backing card (preferably acid free) loose behind your print (don’t stick it )
Now you are ready to pop the mounted print into a frame. Use a framing sticky tape (usually it’s sticky brown paper tape) to seal around the edges to cover the brads. Make sure it also bends round in a right angle to cover the back edge part of the frame as this will keep the dust out.
Colour
Colour of mount and frame is entirely your choice. If the print is black and white on off white paper, I find a cream or ivory mount looks good with a black frame. Coloured prints need a bit more thought. Black is a good safe option but other colours can also work well.
You can get mounts cut to size and picture frames at a framers, DIY, supermarkets or craft shops or online.
Here’s a couple of online options for mounts and/or frames.
Sometimes you can buy a frame in a supermarket including a mount that will fit just right like the ‘Divining Bird’ at the top of this post.
’Ice’ lino print is already mounted. It’s a little different in that one of the wings has escaped and is glued to the mount. I gave this print to my son Charlie who wrote the poem that inspired the print. He bought a natural wood frame online which sets off the print well and has it displayed in his boat as pictured.
The following two prints were framed by a professional framer with cream mounts and black frame.
Inspired by the witches hair lichen on Dartmoor, I delved into the internet to find out more about it. And one connection led to another. The first thing I found was its latin name which is AlectoriaSarmentosa.
When I typed the word into google I found a similar first word – Alectorus Rufa which is a red legged partridge and happens to be a bird found on the moors (although most have probably been shot over the years so they are pretty elusive)
This then led me to another ‘Alec’ word…. Alectryomancy, which is a form of divination using birds to predict the future often used by the Ancient Greeks and later the Romans and probably the Celts too. There were many ways to predict the future from birds, some involved counting birds, which direction they were flying, or how many times they called at a particular time.
For this print I drew on another way they looked for prophecies and that was the act of throwing seed over letters drawn on the ground, and letting a cockerel eat them to reveal words or arrangements of letters.
This led me to the Ogham alphabet!
Originally an early medieval Irish text carved into the ancient stones in Ireland, there have been subsequent stones found in Scotland and on Dartmoor with Celtic Ogham text inscribed .
So my red legged partridge was asked a question and she is forming the answer in Ogham.
There are different versions of this variable limited edition print available here. The one above is painted in gouache, there are other versions painted in my handmade inks. Below middle is the gouache, either side are painted using inks I have made from hawthorn berries, gorse flower petals, rowan berries, bracken and oak gall. All versions use red gouache as I couldn’t find a berry to make red. The one on the left I painted the Ogham text in brass Liquid Metal paint which is an option.
Although I have done what I can to prevent fading, the prints using handmade Dartmoor inks are not guaranteed to have lasting colour. They might even change colour! (The colours have already changed as they dried. The red hawthorn became blue (shown below in the bird throat and in the rocks) and the pinky orange rowan became green and a perfect colour for the lichen.
My day was over at Ullacombe barn where my two week studio space for Devon Open Studios was taking place and like most days I decided to blow out the cobwebs on the moor. I went to Black Hill which is the east side of Dartmoor, just a little further up from Ullacombe near Haytor.
The wind blows constantly on the moors and today was no exception. Thin tissue like sheets of wispy clouds shifted around slowly revealing blue sky and shafts of light from the watery sun. Some of the clouds were like long lengths of cotton wool that had been twisted round and round as if god was doing some diy and had dropped the screws!
As I reached the brow of the hill from the carpark, Haytor loomed ahead of me seeming to shout “Hay, I’m here, covered in grockles again.” I could see them, all milling around, like ants, climbing to the top, shouting and waving. I go up too sometimes, but here on Black Hill at the Vale it is quieter. It’s at least a mile away, possibly two and amazes me how you can hear people on the rocks if the wind is blowing this way. But today it was an east wind so it was quiet.
I followed the track north, keeping Haytor rocks on the left. Occasional larks rose from the gorse and heather and small flocks of crows pecked about on grass clearings. Sheep grazed on the new shoots of heather in the wild fire burnt gorse bushes.
And then I saw him. 20 yards away, standing in the middle of the path was a very handsome blackfaced ram with large curly horns and tousled coat of pure wildness. For a long moment our eyes met as we sized each other up. There was no way I wanted to be the bigger animal, for I was in complete awe of this magnificent creature. I would be quite happy to stand aside for him and let him make his way through. I lowered my eyes so he didn’t feel threatened as I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t run at me with those formidable horns.
I felt relief as well as disappointment as he turned his head to walk away from the path. But as he did so I noticed one of his horns was woven through with heather, gorse, hawthorn and bracken. Even though I couldn’t see him that clearly up to now, he suddenly became sharply in focus in hyperreal colour and I knew in that instant that he could be nothing less than a god.
After that encounter, I became rather obsessed with him, and I searched for him on the path whilst carving him out of lino.
But to no avail! Other sheep were there, but not him. In hindsight I wasn’t really surprised, he was an otherworldly sheep deity so would remain elusive.
I printed him with my body press (that’s my feet), gilded his halo in metal leaf and painted the moorland flora with gouache paint.
There are more versions here (gilded horns, black and white, coloured flora).
Now I’m working on another version that will be printed entirely from Dartmoor inks I’ve made from Dartmoor charcoal, wind falls berries, bracken ink and gorse flower ink.
One moonlit night before sleep as I slipped into reverie, I was sure I heard the susurration of feathery wings, rippling through the midnight air outside my window. I’d been watching the swallows on the moors swooping and diving, small gulps weaving a beautiful sky dance, exuding joy from delicate wings, seemingly a pre-migration celebration . They had filled their beaks with flying insects, mosquitos, ants and crane flies, in preparation for this night, this night of melancholic harmony, this night when the wind blew from the north to help them begin their long journey. Now flying was no longer a wonderful gig in the sky under a golden orb but a serious and resolute necessity, brought about by the changing season, the squally showers cooling the air, the berries that blush on the trees, the colours of the sun caught in the bracken and leaves. And they took off one by one from their perches of hawthorn and oak leaving the moors by the light of the moon.
Will it always be ?
At this time of year
When hawthorn berries are ripe
Under darkening skies
When colours deepen and shadow
And trees bend and bow their heads
To the calling breeze, and mizzle wet branches droop in
Lonely Mist,
Will it always be that the wind and cooler rain,
Tell the swallows to gather and fly
And wings brush leaves through trees that wail and cry
This year I won an emerging artist bursary award from Devon Open Studios. Have a look at the bursary winners here.
I also won the Joanna Radford prize which was a cash prize to help me purchase some more (much needed) materials.
Here I am emerging from the bushes!
I will be exhibiting my work with Moorland Makers, a diverse group of artists and crafters from Dartmoor, for Devon Open Studios which starts on 6th September and continues until 21st September. We will be in the barn at Ullacombe Farm, Haytor Road, Bovey Tracey. Details here
I will have all my lino prints with me, including some new work that takes a slightly different form in that all the materials were foraged from Dartmoor.
So for instance, in this raven piece, I made the paper from the loose dry moorland grass, (which is also hanging in tufts next to the moorland corvid feathers) and sourced charcoal from Yarner woods to make the ink for the lino print. Sheeps wool from Fernworthy is twisted to make the strings to hang the piece from a bit of wood picked up on one of the many walks I have on the moors.
I’m working with a sense of place, an eco mindset, a quiet form of activism which questions consumerism, and an idea that keeps tapping me on the back… What will you make art with once the world runs down and out? (I’m assuming I’ll still be here and the moors will be too!) The first priority will be to find food and the second to make art.
Of course I know I’d probably be more interested in surviving the onslaught of lawlessness and chaos that would ensue, dodging the Mad Maxes and probably becoming one myself with sticks and stones at the ready! I will probably have to quickly learn how to shoot a gun and kill the unraveled nutters if they didn’t get me first. I really hope I don’t have to kill animals, I’d like to think I’d survive on berries and nuts, but come the winter…
‘The sublime is in turn of different sorts. The feeling of it is sometimes accompanied with some dread or even melancholy, in somecases merely with quiet admiration and in yet others with a beauty spreadover a sublime prospect. ‘ (1764, 2:209 Kant)
Yesterday I walked across the moor to Little Hound Tor and White Moor stone circle. Along the way I met a group of people while we navigated our way in opposite directions over two streams . ‘Are you alone? ‘ one of the group asked. I thought it was pretty obvious I was, there’s no where to hide out there, and no one else here, then I wondered if she could see the moorland spirits furtively following me, but disappearing whenever I looked behind.
If it wasn’t for the wind I would think I was on the moon or some other distant planet. The landscape is vast, barren and lonely at this time of year. The peak of every hill appears to be closer than it is. The land seems to expand when you are about to reach the next slope.
I’ve been exploring the Romantic sublime in the landscape, and according to 18th century philosopher Edmund Burke the sublime can be not only awesome but also terrifying. He writes:
‘The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is Astonishment ; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. ‘ (1757 , p.53)
Of terror he writes:
‘For fear being an apprehension of pain or death, it operates in a manner that resembles actual pain. Whatever therefore is terrible, with regard to sight, is sublime too, whether this cause of terror, be endured with greatness of dimensions or not; for it is impossible to look on any thing as trifling, or contemptible, that may be dangerous’ (p. 53)
Sublime landscapes include vast wild landscapes, oceans, starry skies and high mountains.
I can imagine you could feel terrified if you lost your way here or stumbled and fell, (especially when your phone just ran out of charge like mine did) , who would ever find you? I didn’t see anyone else for the rest of the walk and I could see a long way in every direction.
It definitely felt spooky with the wind whistling in the molinia grass, and I had to break up the gnawing loneliness , which seemed to come on after only an hour of walking, by chatting to myself (or the Dartmoor spirits) about sheep, stones and circles.
Immanuel Kant (another 18th century philosopher ) describes 3 states of the sublime:
‘I will call the first the terrifying sublime, the second the noble, and the third the magnificent.’
Of the first he says:
‘Deep solitude is sublime, but in a terrifying way. For this reason great and extensive wastes, such as the immense deserts of Schamo in Tartary, have always given us occasion to people them with fearsome shades, goblins, and ghosts.” (2:209, 2:210)
The Dartmoor spirits followed me on my journey through the pale wind dried grass and scrub. Sometimes I could hear them whispering, but if I stopped to listen they would cease while the wind continued to shush and weave through the grasses like an ocean in the distance. Yet it wasn’t just this sound that made me feel that the sea really was just over the distant hills, it was the molinia grass, (which is more or less the same as marram grass found on the coast ) , the sandy colour of the grass grazed short by sheep, and the general shape of the terrain . It was easy to imagine what it was like when Dartmoor was a sea 400 million years ago.
I was looking for two stone circles , neither of which seemed to be showing themselves to me. I had visited the Scorhill stone circle the week before and knew how it had been quite hard to find until I was nearly upon it. As the land is so expansive, I had expected to see it from a distance, but it was hidden by a fold and lay on a gentle slope. Armed with this knowledge I hoped to unexpectedly come across the other two circles.
When I met the group of people at the stream crossing, I grappled with whether to ask them if they had seen either of the two circles. Part of me didn’t want to ask where it was (not that any directions would make much difference here, as the weren’t many way markers here) What would they say, ‘find the sheep with the sprayed red bottoms and bear left up the hill’ ? I felt I wanted to challenge myself to find it and it would show itself when I was ready to see it. However I gave in to my pride and asked. One of the woman said they had only seen one and it was on the right under ‘Little Hound Tor’, just up there, and she pointed vaguely in the direction I was walking.
‘Just up there ‘ became another hour of walking or stumbling I should say. The track was worn and stony. In places, farmers or perhaps the Dartmoor National Trust had added gravel and sand to make the tracks accessible and/or to retain the peat/water below the ground.
Despite being able to see for miles I couldn’t see the tor. The group said they had walked 15 miles from Scorhill. I could see this could be a long walk.
Kant says:
‘A long duration is sublime. If it is of time past, it is noble; if it is projected forth into an unforeseeable future, then there is something terrifying in it. ‘ (2.211)
I climbed for sometime before I saw a blackness. A stretch of the blackest of black. Hard to tell what it was I walked towards it. The trees in the far distance by the North Teign river were very black so I thought it could be trees but as I got closer I could see that the blackness hugged the ground. Bushes perhaps . Then the smell hit me. It was a patch of burnt scrub, mostly heather, about the size of two tennis courts. Presumably from a wild fire, luckily put out or burnt out before it caused even more damage. Amongst the charred heather were some large stones that looked as if they formed a loose circle but they were spaced too far apart to make me think they were one of the circles I was looking for.
Then I saw two tors in the nearest distance side by side so I headed for the closest one, constantly scanning the land on both sides for a circle (or two) . As I got closer to the tor the wind picked up a notch or two and things began to feel extraordinarily other worldish. I felt as if I’d slipped through a portal and was viewing the landscape beyond the misty veil, everything was soft focus, the contour of the mountainous hills on the horizon perfectly curved as if in tune with a beautiful harmony, so I could listen with my eyes.
I climbed to the top of the tor. It was the smallest tor I’d seen on Dartmoor so wasn’t difficult to climb and I stood at the top while the wind buffeted and whistled around carrying the moorland tunes that caressed my skin. I could taste peat and burnt heather on my lips. My shifting senses merged and I felt a sense of freedom, exhilarated, melancholic and engulfed by something I can only describe as the sublime, at least my interpretation of it.
As I looked back to the path I had just walked I saw the stone circle in the near distance. Now I knew where it was I could relax a bit and I sat behind a rock to get out of the wind, eat my peanut butter sandwiches and do a sketch of the mountainous landscape that opened before me.
Forty minutes later I had reached the circle. It felt bigger than the one at Scorhill although both had 19 stones (I wondered if there was any significance in this number , perhaps there had been more originally , would there be any significance in 20 or 21? ) Each stone was beautiful in shape and size and when I entered the circle, despite the wind maintaining its force, I felt an unexpected sense of calm. The windswept, wild and lonely euphoria of the sublime on the tor was replaced with an inner calm, as if the stones were offering supernatural protection.
I wondered if this was an encounter with another kind of sublime.
18th century philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn described the beautiful as having boundaries whereas the sublime was boundless:
‘what is genuinely beautiful has definite boundaries which it may not overstep. If the full dimensions of the sublime cannot be taken in by the senses all at once, then it ceases to be sensuously beautiful and becomes gigantic or enormous in extension’ (‘Sublime and Naive’, 192 – 193, in Brady p.48)
In her book, ‘The Sublime in Modern Philosophy’, Emily Brady sums up neatly:
‘the beautiful involves calm contemplation, while the sublime is marked by a ‘movement’ of the mind.’ (2013, p.57)
In light of this and as the stone circle formed a ‘boundary’ it would seem to fit into the aesthetics described as ‘beautiful’ however despite having different feelings to the wild ones of freedom I felt on the tor, I think the circle experience is something more than beautiful. Burke discusses an ‘artificial infinite’ a sublime experience found through religious (man made) architecture such as cathedrals and temples, which highlight a relationship with sacred geometry. As long as the uniform space has no angles to break up the line of sight:
‘It is in this kind of artificial infinity, I believe, we ought to look for the cause why a rotund has such a noble effect. For in a rotund, whether it be a building or a plantation, you can no where fix a boundary; turn which way you will, the same object still seems to continue, and the imagination has no rest. But the parts must be uniform as well as circularly disposed, to give this figure its full force; because any difference, whether it be in the disposition, or in the figure, or even in the colour of the parts, is highly prejudicial to the idea of infinity, which every change must check and interrupt, at every alteration commencing a new series.’ (P.68)
With these rules the stone circle would not be sublime as it isn’t uniform enough to substantiate it.
I see the stone circle as an open and closed space, it isn’t set within a tight boundary like a round temple or cathedral, there are gaps between the stones and there is no roof so the boundless sublime moorland is within sight. It’s an ‘in between’ sacred space, it’s both and neither artificial sublime and/nor sublime, it’s a liminal and subliminal otherworldly space, a place for calm contemplation and wild passions, a place where Dartmoor spirits continue to dance*
With the wind still whistling through the grasses, I didn’t try to sketch the stones, I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold the paper still from flapping around in my sketchbook, so I walked around the interior noticing the blood stains and bird shit that had run down the stones. Signs of life and death. The never ending cycle of the cosmos, the stone circle telling the story.
I thanked the stones for their hospitality and headed back leaving the Dartmoor spirits behind in the circle. Except for one who followed me to the gate …
Quotes from:
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful by Edmund Burke (1757), Oxford World Classics, 2008
Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime By M. Immanuel Kant ((1764) Konigsberg, by Johann Jakob Kanter, 1st edition
The Sublime in Modern Philosophy by Emily Brady (2013)
*The Nine Maidens at Belstone Stone Circle.
This circle is a few miles away from the White Moor Circle. There is an arc of circles on the Dartmoor high moor. I didn’t find the other circle near White Moor and I think I still have to others to discover.
Find out more about this Lino print and why the maidens are dancing here
Over the last year I experimented making paper using :
shredded receipts
tea bags and coffee
garlic leaves
Grass
and old Lino prints
I was quite fascinated with the garlic leaf paper . I admit the colour wasn’t great 😆 but the plant must have so much …. something in it to make it feel like and sound like greaseproof paper. Perhaps its mucilage.
I tried painting on the receipt paper
and the tea and coffee paper (this one had an addition of old receipts)
and I tried Lino printing on the grass paper which unfortunately had faded, losing some of that lovely lively green it had at the beginning. I had chucked in some washing soda in the hope it would preserve the colour, I read somewhere that it would help, but it didn’t seem to, although maybe it had a little.
this one has an interesting texture but resists the ink … due to its … whatever it is that makes it more plasticky than paper derived from wood.
if there is anyone out there reading this who is a biologist, or just knows, please let me know in the comments!
I’m going to try more Lino printing on my handmade paper and eventually I want to try printing them with earth and plant inks which I have already dabbled with but not yet developed the practice enough to get the consistencies right. This was a wood cut I made printed on Japanese rice paper using a mixture of coffee, sloe and old oak bark.
I like the delicate earthiness of the colour, perfect for a moth.
I think most colours made using plant inks or earth paints will be delicate , and over time I presume they will fade. So this is one reason why I haven’t made more work like this and offered it for sale. But on the other hand I love the idea that a work is transient, changing hues gradually through time, like the leaves on the trees. When I was a mosaic artist (my previous occupation for 30 years) I gilded glass with metal leaf and incorporated it into my work. I made leaf sculptures that I put outside and they changed colour from rich gold to pale gold with subtle tones of green. It was fascinating watching the transformation. The same glass didn’t change inside, it was only when placed outside in reaction, I presume to the weather, be it wet, cold, heat or bright sunlight.
So as our time on this earth is temporary why not embrace the transient and transformative nature of these materials? If we enjoy our gardens or rambles in the countryside, we also enjoy watching the changing seasonal fruits and flowers. But when it comes to art, why are we obsessed with permanence? Why shouldn’t the art work on your wall fade and change shades over time, surely that makes it more exciting, more alive. It has a relationship to the light, it reacts to the scattering particles that come in through the window in waves. When you think about it, really think about it that in itself is mind blowing!
One of the selling points of my work as a mosaic artist was that it was completely fade resistant and it would last forever. (That was before I started using the gilded glass). And I’m not saying there isn’t a place for permanent fade resistant works, without which there wouldn’t be any art history, making it difficult to celebrate artists, place in historical or political context or reference techniques and influences, and of course without which our lives would be less meaningful. But I do think transient works are just as important in our constantly changing world.
Art works that are non permanent are not new, for instance think about earth artists such as Andy Goldsworthy who makes works in the environment by layering colourful leaves that disintegrate, sculpting ice that melts and stacking stones that eventually topple . The forces of nature are an integral part of the work.
One of the main arguments to support the case for impermanent works are that they have a small carbon footprint and if nothing else they serve as a reminder to be receptive to change. And who knows the art might just last as long as we do.
