RHYTHM OF THE SHORE
Gentle walks and reflective pauses in the shorelands and hedgerows around her Cornish home are part of artist and printmaker Lou Tonkin’s creative process, inspiring work that celebrates nature’s quiet wonders
Inspired by her estuary environment, printmaker and artist Lou Tonkins says slowing down is key to her creativity.
Lou Tonkin traces a path through waist-high reeds along the river’s edge. Shortly the river will open into Falmouth harbour and the open sea; but here at low tide, curlews and egrets forage in the seaweed that thrives on the exposed riverbed.
Lou is looking for a secluded spot where she can sit and sketch. Once she finds a nicely hidden nook, she dips down and begins.
“Lots of my work is about what you see when you find quiet spots like this,” she explains.
“It evokes a feeling of sitting patiently and watching nature emerge.”
Lou’s prints, populated by birds, wildflowers and leaves, all start in this way, with her walking out into the Cornish countryside in search of minute details to capture in initial drawings.
“I begin with dashes of pencil marks that catch the angle of a bird’s cocked head or the curve of its wing in flight,” she says. Later, back at her workshop, she will add more details in ink and work those images into stylised scenes. These designs are then painstakingly carved into lino blocks and then hand-printed on to paper or linen.
The idea for the larger design tends to come together as Lou heads home after a morning’s sketching. “As I retrace my steps, it takes shape in my mind’s eye,” she says. Even that steady act of walking is part of the creative process:
“If I have to get in the car afterwards and drive, it’s never quite the same – I lose my thread,” she explains. “To draw, I need to be immersed in nature and to follow its slow, steady rhythms.”
This love of wandering through the Cornish countryside is something Lou has done since childhood. “My favourite memories are of exploring the narrow lanes and hedgerows around St Erth with my grandpa,” she says.
“It wasn’t about getting somewhere, it was more of an idle dawdle. We would carry thumb sticks to swish away stinging nettles or I’d pick little posies of wildflowers. It was all very gentle, very kind. He slowed everything down to my child’s pace.”
Lou and her grandfather called their outings “hedgerow grazing” and that habit of literally combing the foliage to seek out small creatures, buds and flowers stood Lou in good stead for her career as an artist. “I think that taking the time to look really closely helped to develop my eye for detail,” she says.
DRAWING STRENGTH
Lou grew up in Crowan, a village in Cornwall’s former mining heartland, and then the wilder coastal setting of St Just. “My school reports tended to dismiss me as ‘lazy’ or said I had ‘a poor attitude to learning’. But I could always draw well,” she says. It was only once she was studying illustration at Falmouth School of Art that Lou was diagnosed as dyslexic. “I now view it as a talent,” she says. “Less helpful for getting to grips with school textbooks, but invaluable for seeing the world around me in a more complete way – as an illustrator but also as a printmaker, envisaging how several layers of ink came come together to make one visually rich artwork.”
Lou now lives in Mylor Bridge near Falmouth with her three children – Ned, 17, Billy, 16, and Celia-Rose, 12 – in a characterful 1930s bungalow. Her studio, a sturdy building that once stored the village’s single-decker buses, sits behind the house in their garden.
“I immediately loved the feel of its 1930s proportions and its wonderful position within such a beautiful village,” she says. “It’s the most fantastic direct environment outside the door; I’m drawn towards wide spaces, lanes and the landscapes, earthy pigments and textures, so I’m in my element in here.”
It’s in this studio space that Lou spreads out her printmaking tools, which include woodenhandled blades, lino prints mounted on blocks of wood, stacks of unbleached linen and sheafs