Description

Thomas’ delight in nature, and his approach of linking it with both the processes of writing and of the body, is particularly interesting.The gothic outline of my print combines the knobbly shapes of pollarded plane trees, a familiar sight in Swansea in autumn, with other tree shapes, sculpted and dwarfed by time, the weather, or the hand of man.These are nature’s signs, like hands, fists,fingers, knuckles, gestures, making ‘wordy shapes’ and echoing Thomas’ ambiguity.The organic form grows from the base, symbolising some sort of life-force.The whole image can be read in many different ways. As in Thomas’ poetry, meaning seems to shift and slide about.

The freeform shape of my etching plate was created by rolling on a hard ground, drawing the shape through it, and immersing in ferric chloride for twenty four hours or more. I then laid a soft ground on the copper plate and impressed this with natural textures, such as seaweed and dried grasses. I also used some of my recent experimental collagraph boards, which had the materials already fastened to them. This made it easier to control the results. After biting, the process was repeated several times, whilst stopping out different bits of the plate. I have used no drawing as such, but where differences in tone were needed, I have added some aquatint, or scraped and burnished the plate.