Two scans from the lino blocks I am working on currently. The caustic soda that I use to make the etched marks has a violent beauty that is very distinctive and makes impressive artworks of the blocks themselves. The details of the etch aren't particularly evident here. The colours are glorious and delicate.

Two Figures (an etched linocut) is related to Bird Device in as much as they were both born out of meanderings in woodland that I frequent. I either work from memory or from tiny drawings that I make on site. A good quote I found by Kiki Smith from 1998 sums up my belief in the power of Printmaking: "Prints mimic what we are as humans: we are all the same and yet everyone is different. I also think there's a spiritual power in repetition, a devotional quality, like saying rosaries."

Bird Device is a digital image that I have developed from a photogram of some drawings that I made on tracing paper and acetate. They will act as a starting point for a series of woodcuts/linocuts/drypoints that I intend to make shortly. I'm not sure at the moment which way to orientate them but that will all come out in the wash as they say. The appearance of the bird form was initially accidental or rather the consequence of abstraction. One might call it serendipity.