Lino Etching on Awagami Washi

43 x 53 

Edition of 5

Over 80 years after that moment of arrival, of anxiety, fear and adrenalin I am standing looking at the WW2 landing beaches in Normandy. Absorbing every wind-blown sand grain, listening to every wave. I thought I would want to swim, be enveloped by history. I always swim…but I couldn’t… Instead, I make repeated marks on fluttering paper, saving them to transfer to print once back in the quiet of the studio.

The prints subsequently made capture a stillness from a mayhem marked in a collective history. The fragility of the moment is caught using the visceral technique of lino etching on the delicate, vulnerable surface of Japanese Awagami Washi paper and waxed, manipulated Chinese mulberry bark paper. There is contrast of violence and delicacy held within the statements of thought, the dominant lino etched black marks on the fine, sensitive papers. The sweep of a gesture caught on the plate and transferred in deep inks to the handmade surface, my emotions held in the vulnerable texture. My own small marks recorded as a meagre response to events.

The work is part on an ongoing practice theme relating to ancestry and place, and these prints are specifically exploring my family connections, and that of many families, to the D-Day landing beaches of Normandy.