Nature mirrored by a printmaker’s art
Angela Harding’s artwork is carved into lino in fine detail, bringing scenes from the sea and countryside to life
DRIFTS OF SWEET perfume waft languidly through an open door to printmaker Angela Harding’s light-filled garden studio in rural Rutland: England’s smallest county. In the borders outside, silvery oleaster, euphorbia and fragrant rose bushes sit amid pockets of colour from the powder-blue chicory and violet agapanthus, while gauzy umbellifers flow through the garden like a soft summer breeze. Beyond the hedges that mark this idyllic space, open fields of rolling green and gold sweep to the horizon, bisected by narrow country lanes. It is a vista that has informed Angela’s lino, or vinyl, and silk screen prints for years. “I must have stared at that view for goodness knows how many hours,” she confides. “I find it very inspiring.”
Leaning over a small magnifying glass in her whitewashed and oak-beamed studio, Angela makes smooth incisions with well-practised ease onto a thin piece of linoleum, which outlines a rough sketch of two whippets huddled together. Beside her, a wooden box contains a selection of Swiss cutting tools in a variety of sizes and gouges, while jars of paintbrushes, permanent markers and pencils lie close at hand. On a nearby inking table, speckled pots of water- and oil-based inks line the wall, next to which are scraps of fabric, a palette knife and a handheld roller, freshly cleaned and ready to use. And in one corner of the room sits the most important instrument of Angela’s trade: a steel and iron grade Rochat Albion Press, with varnished hardwood handles.
Around the studio walls are a succession of monochromatic linocut prints, offset by their colourful counterparts, which show the fruits of her labours. Many depict images of birds, including curlews, gannets, swans and owls, set against receding landscapes. “I’ve always loved British birds,” admits Angela, who, since childhood, has had a natural affinity for them. “While some people had pop stars on their bedroom walls, I had posters of birds,” she laughs.
As she carefully brushes away redundant filings of lino, Angela pauses to look at the garden, where a summer blackbird is hopping among the rose bushes; its high-pitched trill is barely perceptible amid the soft rhythms of country life. It is one of many garden visitors that have inspired her work, so it seems rather fitting that she currently lives in a village called Wing.
Artistic background
Born in Stoke-on-Trent, a Staffordshire city that is commonly referred to as ‘The Potteries’ and considered to be the capital of ceramics, Angela has been surrounded by the arts from an early age. Though her mother was actively involved in the pottery industry, she was set against her children following an artistic career. “My mother attended art school and was determined that my two sisters and I wouldn’t, so we all did. That was the beginning really: an act of rebellion.”
Angela discovered her passion for printmaking while studying fine art at Leicester Polytechnic from 1979 to 1982. After further studies at Nottingham Trent University, she proceeded to have a portfolio career, continuing to develop her own personal work alongside teaching, art consultancy and volunteering oversees. Angela was also one of the founding members of the regional printmaking centre, Leicester Print
Workshop. This is a charity that provides support for artists and facilities for silk screen, etching, engraving, stone and plate lithography, relief and letterpress. In 1986, she joined the management committee with other volunteers.
“I found it difficult to balance creativity with my other responsibilities, so 16 years ago, I made the decision to do printmaking full-time. At the beginning, I still did a bit of teaching, but slowly the balance has shifted.”
During these formative years, Angela worked predominantly with etching and dry point, which are printmaking techniques that belong to the intaglio family and involve using a sharp, needle-like diamond- or carbide-tipped instrument to make precise incisions onto a metal plate, or ‘matrix’. The effect was more painterly, but as her work shifted towards commercial, her preferred method now combines two processes: vinyl, or linocutting, and screen-printing. A more distinct and illustrative style has blossomed as a result: her prints have been featured in magazines, brochures, on greetings cards and as book covers.
Inspired by nature
Each print evolves from a number of rough sketches drawn on local walks with her two Whippets or further afield in Norfolk, Suffolk and Cornwall, where she makes regular visits to
exhibit her work in galleries. These are kept in a sketchbook, which Angela refers to as ‘your studio in your pocket’.
“A lot of what I do now is fed by years of working very intuitively and spontaneously on paper. I used to do a lot of direct line drawing and have always kept a sketchbook,” she explains. Depending on whether she is working to an illustrative brief or on one of her original prints, Angela will often begin by referring to her old sketchbooks for inspiration.
“My work is a combination of what I see in nature and past experience. They are not precise drawings, but an attempt to summon a feeling,” she says. Angela strives to incorporate places she has visited and the atmosphere they evoked in her prints, often with an implied narrative. “Southwold Swan reflects our visits to the Suffolk coast. If you look closely on the quay, you can see myself and my husband, Mark, with our two whippets walking to our little boat, Windsong, moored up in Southwold. Another print, Two Yorkshire Whippets, is inspired by memories of the years I spent in Yorkshire as a child.” This allegorical aspect is evocative of the work of mid 20th century artists Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden, whom Angela has been drawn to since her student days.
“The swan, with arched neck Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows Her state with oary feet”
John Milton, ‘Paradise Lost’
The process
Relief printing works in mirror image, so the drawing will be a reverse of the final print. Once the design has been refined, Angela prepares the lino, which is 3.2mm thick and cut to the same size as the intended print. She wet and dry sands the surface to remove any small imperfections, before painting it with Indian ink. This stains the lino and acts as a visual aid when cutting, to show where incisions have been made. Angela then uses a permanent ink pen to draw directly onto it.
“I draw quite freely, which can be unusual for printmakers, as they tend to do a drawing and then trace it. For me, this makes the process very static. I’m all for changing as I go, within limits. It makes the line very free.”
The process of cutting is executed using a selection of carving tools. Angela prefers a number 12 Swiss cutting tool, which has a very fine 1mm, V-shaped steel gouge. Other blades can be U-shaped or C-shaped and are designed to achieve certain textures. The rounded, pear wood handle rests in her palm, which allows Angela to apply pressure onto the blade. “I work the lino warm, as it cuts easier. Different tones are created by the amount of material taken out. As I cut, I am letting white in because the ink will sit on areas of relief. So, as well as working in a mirror, I am also working in negative,” she explains.
This can be very time-consuming, but it is the part that Angela enjoys most. “You get lost in that world when cutting. I find it both challenging and exciting. I always discover something new, no matter how many years I’ve been doing it.”
She relishes the use of line, and her mark-making is very expressive. Though Angela tries to be economical with incisions, her designs often incorporate a variety of textures executed through white-line cutting, crosshatch and stippling, which translate to different tonal values in print.
Once she is satisfied, Angela moves to inking. Using a palette knife, she spreads the black, oil-based relief ink onto the smooth surface of her inking table, which she then uses to coat her handheld roller. When it is evenly covered, Angela transfers the ink onto the lino by repeatedly rolling the surface, applying gentle pressure to gradually build up the ink coating. This is a
careful balance, as too much ink will obscure the finer details of her artwork. She is now ready to print.
All printing is done on an Albion Press, which allows larger works to be printed faster and with greater consistency than by hand. Angela’s press is based on the design of an 1854 Ulmer & Sons platen press, used in traditional printmaking before the advent of lithography and digital processes.
The lino is positioned in the centre of the bed, with Heritage 300gsm paper placed on top. The tympan, which is a metal frame stretched with calico or parchment and hinged to the carriage of the press, is lowered on the printing paper. The pressure can be adjusted by means of thin paper sheets, known as packing, that can be added before the tympan is lowered. Angela then proceeds to wind the bed into the press until it rests centrally under the platen: a metal plate that moves vertically and presses the paper onto the linocut.
With her feet firmly on the ground, Angela pulls the bar handle, which lowers the platen, towards her in a rowing motion until she feels resistance.
Winding the bed out again, she lifts the tympan and peels back the paper to reveal the finished print.
Screen-printing
Different techniques can be used to introduce colour, such as the reduction process or multi-block method. The former involves layers of colour printed with a single block and a series of progressive cuttings, while the latter requires multiple blocks for each colour. Angela, however, prefers screen-printing; a technique that uses a woven mesh, or screen, to support an ink-blocking stencil.
Firstly, she creates a registration sheet by drawing the outline of the linocut onto a piece of Heritage paper: this will act as a guide, so that the colour is printed in the same place each time. She then uses the original black-and-white print to trace, and then cut, where each colour will fall onto a number of stencils. A light box is used to assist with this. A finished stencil is positioned on the paper and the screen placed on top. Water-based ink in the desired colour is then rolled across it, which forces the ink to pass through the threads of woven mesh and into the areas that have been cut. This process is repeated to build up the layers of colour, using the registration marks each time for guidance.
Once this is done, Angela revisits her linocut and
“Nature never did betray The heart that loved her”
William Wordsworth, ‘Lines Composed Above Tintern Abbey’
overprints the final image. The effect gives her work both a softness of colour and clarity in her delicate line work. When using this method, she advises mixing the black ink with cobalt driers, as the water-based silk screen can act as a primer, preventing the oil from drying. “As long as you’ve been careful and kept everything in the right place, it all comes together,” says Angela. “There are some tolerances in my work: it’s never a precise registration, but I quite like that. There is a liveliness to the mistakes.
“When I’ve been working on a print and pull back that paper for the first time, it’s like Christmas. It’s still a surprise,” she smiles. “I think printmaking naturally expresses what I feel. I have found my forte, and I’m a lucky person to have done that, but there is always room for improvement. I feel like I’ve got a lot to do yet.”
“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks”
John Muir