This print was made in the spring of 2019. I knew I wanted to make a new print of Bamburgh, as it has always been a special place for us as a family. We usually park in the beach car park and walk south along the length of the beach, with the castle to our right. Over the years we have played games, paddled, had picnics and sampled most of the pubs and cafes in the village. We have spent days there in the glorious sunshine, the biting cold and the howling wind.
Every new print I make begins with a walk, armed with my camera and my sketchbook. I decided on a view of the castle and beach from the dunes to the north. The colours on the day I visited Bamburgh were soft and warm, and I have exaggerated them in the print, while restricting the palette to yellows, oranges, browns, greens and the blue of the sky.
The castle itself is printed from lino, but most of the print is made from monoprints, which I have printed and then cut up and collaged to form the final composition. The monoprint sections are made by printing onto a plate with textured implements, tools or objects. I have some old rollers which I have cut into – literally, into the rubber roller itself, so that when I roll the ink, patterns are printed. I used these carved rollers to print the brown pebbles on the beach and the striped rock strata in the cliffs beneath the castle.
The sky itself was printed directly from a roller. I like the dramatic diagonal shapes in the sky, which are reminiscent of clouds or aeroplane trails. I have used the same technique to print similar skies on my prints of Lindisfarne, Sycamore Gap and Hadrian’s Wall, and it’s nice to have this common style running through the series.
I used a type of Japenese printing paper called kozo, which is made from mulberry bark. It is very thin but strong, and I find it works well with these collages, giving a clean line between layers while still appearing flat.
The print is one of my favourites, as I know the location so well. There is little detail in the image, but the shapes, textures and colours are enough to conjure up the place in my mind and I can almost smell the sea and feel the breeze when I look at it.