Lino print
Actual image size 40 x 60 cm
No mount
No frame
Limited edition of 100
Hand burnished on quality catridge paper
 
An iconic viewpoint, this must have drawn people for many centuries. Generation upon generation.
The arc of the river. The Eildon Hills. The sense of space and time standing still.
The view is a comforting mix of transience: cultivation, farm fields and forest, and of permanence: timeless river, hills and cloudscape.
I went there and hadn`t realised how significant it is to folk. As I walked down from the car park, through the gorse, I came upon countless dried flower bunches, ribbons, messages.
There`s a numinous feel to the place.
Trees: practically speaking I`ve either scratch-drawn the lines of a tree into the lino (producing white line on a black background)  or cut away and around the drawn tree shape (black image on a white back ground)
There are types of tree based on actual species (observed and photographed): birch, larch, spruce, oak, sycamore, and you develop a shorthand for each. With variations.
Cutting into lino is like drawing with your other hand; no easy, familiar, habitual flow. No “lazy” lines and shapes. The medium and tools make us draw like a 5 year old child.
And because we are largely working “in the dark”, on a reverse image, with little sense of how strongly the white and black areas are going to get on, the final printed image always feels bolder than a drawing, and more radical.