Description

My etching plays on the knowledge that miners in their underground caverns are following the fossilised seams of prehistoric forests. All around them are the fossilised remains of ancient creatures – dinosaurs and beings millions of years old.  In the dark I let imagination bring them back to life.

Before my mid-life change of career into the visual arts I worked for many years as a journalist, for part of that time as an industrial correspondent in Fleet Street. During that time, I was taken down two working coal mines, one near Metz in Eastern France and the other in the East Midlands. I recall the claustrophobia and the chilling sound of millions of tons of rock creaking above one’s head. In my images, with each creak a creature emerges from its sleep of many ages.