A NATURAL PACE

For artist and printmaker Lou Tonkin, slowing down to notice the details in the hedgerows and shorelands near her Cornish home is part of her creative process

Artist Lou Tonkin’s work is inspired by Cornwall’s hedgerows and shorelines

Iou Tonkin is gently tracing a path through waist-high reeds along the riverbank, looking for a secluded spot where she can sit and sketch. Once she finds a nicely hidden nook, she settles down and begins. “A lot of my work is around what I see when I discover quiet areas like this,” she explains. “It is about sitting patiently and watching nature emerge.” Lou’s prints – populated by birds, wild flowers and leaves – all start in this way, with a walk in the Cornish countryside in search of minute details to capture in her initial drawings. “I begin with pencil marks – dashes 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 later painstakingly carved into lino blocks and then hand-printed on 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. And 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.”

Lou’s love of rural wanderings first began in childhood. “My best 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’d carry thumb sticks to swish away stinging nettles, or I’d pick little posies of wild flowers. 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