Conversation with my Ancestors

2024

Conversation with my Ancestors began as a series of observational drawings I made whilst walking in the Gower Peninsula, Wales. These drawings, with which I experimented with a more abstract mark-making style, then formed the foundation of an artist book.

Interested with how landscape remains constant whilst all else changes, this project explored connecting to a forgotten past through landscape.

This artist’s book proposes that landscape can be a form of time travel, using landscape as a path through history and as a constant throughout change. A lot of my practice is based on sense of space, the feeling of belonging that we do or do not feel in certain places. Inspired by Ecocritical theory and Gestalt psychology, I apply these theories to my own personal experiences with landscape. This piece utilises a variety of printmaking techniques, primarily etching alongside monoprint, embossing, and letterpress. I am interested in the material interaction between paper and metal: two opposite materials, one permanent, and one impermanent.

This process-led project was heavily influenced by taking my sketchbook into landscape itself. The en plein air works pictured here formed the foundation of the project, and were used to develop a dramatic and gestural visual language.