READING, RADIO AND RED KITES
always to hand, she’ll spy on fieldfares and redwings and perhaps the odd grazing muntjac. Come springtime, she’ll gaze at hares cavorting and birds nesting. The things she witnesses become subjects for her work.
Walking her dogs, Ami the whippet and Syd the lurcher, is another daily routine that often sparks Angela’s ideas. She loves immersing herself in the Rutland landscape, which she describes as “soft” and “cosy”. “I like walking the same route every morning,” she says. “We leave the village by going across farmland and through a little spinney. I enjoy the open aspect of the land – it’s quite rolling here. I also love being out by myself. You see things more personally.”
Other places in Britain that inspire Angela include Norfolk (“it has a great salt-marsh atmosphere”), Cornwall and Shropshire.
If anyone sees Angela on her walks, they may notice her pause, take out her sketchbook and scribble something down. She could be drawing but she might also be writing a note to herself. In one of her sketchbooks, which is full of doodles of birds she watched at nearby Rutland Water, one of her jottings reads “cormorants stalking around like old people”.
“I mostly write down ideas and experiences,” says Angela. “My sketchbooks contain references and notes on things I’ve seen or read. I don’t formally draw anything as a picture. I’ve changed how I work over the years. When my children [George, 21, Holly, 22, and stepdaughter Amber, 22] were young, I didn’t always have time to sketch, so I’d keep an image in my head. I still do that now. An impression of running foxes in Yorkshire has stayed with me since I was a girl and I’m planning to do something on them soon.” When beginning a piece, Angela takes her idea and refers to books and other artworks. She is strongly influenced by such artists as 1930s painter and illustrator Eric Ravilious, who famously captured the landscape of the chalk downs of southern England, and 18th-century naturalist and wood engraver Thomas Bewick, who wrote and illustrated natural history books, including several on birds. “I have hundreds of books on flowers but it’s my Thomas Bewick book that I go to most often. That would be in my Desert Island Discs of books,” says Angela, an avid Radio 4 listener who times her lunch each day so she can catch The Archers. Literature is also an important reference, particularly poetry. Angela is currently planning a series of prints on Yorkshire and is reading works by former poet Laureate Ted Hughes.
To start a print, Angela will draw the design on to the vinyl or lino block and then carve it using cutting tools. “I don’t do lots of design first. I think it keeps the work fresh.” She builds up her image in stages and takes proofs to see how it’s developing, printing on newspaper before switching to the display paper when she’s happy with it.
She will then add layers of colour – the soft greens, greys and blues of the English landscape – to complete her original, handmade print. And she doesn’t stop. She works everyday and is always playing around with designs. Perhaps the red kite will be next. • VISIT ANGELA’S STUDIO on 6-7 or 13-14 June as part of Rutland Open Studio, or see her show show at Cambridge Contemporary Art in October. For details and to see more of Angela’s work, go to angelaharding.co.uk
Rosanna Morris
“I don’t do lots of design first – I think it keeps the work fresh”