May 2023 - Willow House Prints

I’m delighted to be offering this framed reduction lino print for sale online after it debuted at Liverpool Print Fair in late April. This is my first reduction lino print at scale and was both rewarding and challenging to complete.

The subject is a stone built farmhouse, Hammerton Hall in Lancashire. The title is derived from William Cowper’s poem ‘The Task (The Winter walk at Noon)’.

But let the months go round, a few short months,
And all shall be restor’d. These naked shoots,
Barren as lances, among which the wind
Makes wintry music, sighing as it goes,
Shall put their graceful foliage on again,
And, more aspiring, and with ampler spread,
Shall boast new charms, and more than they have lost
William Cowper

small black and white lanscape print of an old Lancashire hall of three gables against a dark sky

This piece began last year with a small scale study linocut in black and white, in order to examine both the architecture and help develop a tone for the final piece. It was clear from this that the sky would form a significant part of the work.

Next I drew out the larger composition directly onto lino from reversed sketches, inking in some tones in blue and black to help establish the mood of the piece.

Photo showing a lino design being inked onto a block. A small ceramic mixing palette and ink bottle can be seen, and the artist's hand holds a paint brush — Inking the design onto lino

The first cut was to take out the lightest tones, the off-white paper serving this purpose. The white areas of the window frames, cloud edges, some metallic and reflecting items in the scene were cut first, and the first ink layer was the lightest warm sky colour.

From there the rest of the sky was developed before moving on to the hall and it’s gardens, walls and trees.

The fellside was added separately before the final layers of the trees, shrubs grasses and dry stone walls were cut.

Photograph of an in-progress reduction lino print showing a wintry scene of a Lancashire Hall amidst trees and dry stone walls. — Pulling an intermediate layer of ‘But the months go round’

The final stages were to add the greens to the foreground, some trees and shrubs and intermittently among the dry stone walls, and the very last addition were a number of layers from a separate block for the foreground branches through which the more distant scene is viewed.

‘But let the months go round’ is available in a limited edition of 12 prints. The first of these can be found in the Print Shop framed in a gilt-effect solid wood frame with a custom mount.