Here it is!

Very excited about my new website courtesy of Penny Duck!

http://catherineharnett.co.uk/index.html

Stop Press

My friend and fellow Hope Roader Jan Hopkins is making me a new website. It is most elegant, with  lovely clean pages and very professional drop down menus. On it my work looks rather good, even though I say it myself as shouldn't. Just wait till it goes live. As it is I keep flicking onto the test site for a before and after makeover sensation.

Porto

I am hoping to produce some work inspired by the forms and colours I saw when we visited Porto this summer.

Derbyshire Landscapes

Sepia mixed with black and some linseed oil.

Little Landscapes

Busy in the studio making some small landscapes.

Glorious Day, Little Langdale

Langdale Pikes Plate

These are the first prints from a new plate inspired by a walk across the Langdale Pikes in Cumbria.

The first print is a straight intaglio treatment of black ink. I am pleased with the dynamic quality of the image.

The second print is stronger in the original than it looks in this reproduction. To produce it the plate was first wiped with a mixture of Ultramarine with Paynes Grey, then Cadmium Yellow was rollered on top along with blots of neat Cadmium Red, applied with scrim.

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Shadowlands

I have submitted two mono prints in response to an open call from for work put out by Vertiline In Love ‏ @vertilineinlove. Print artists were invited to depict Sheffield in small, black and white original works. There are some beautiful prints in a wide variety of styles opening new windows on a familiar city.

My own work shows the view that unfolds driving down Spout Lane in Stannington. I  love this unfolding vista of home, which I have seen nearly every day for the past twenty years.

Vertiline in Love's  http://vertilineinlove.com          exciting pop up exhibition, Shadowlands is currently on in Birds Yard, Chapel Walk, Sheffield.

Snow Day

It looked beautiful and it is hardly a long journey, but the studio was not enticing today! For more in a similar vein visit The Priory Garden.

Happy New Year

We have been playing around with wooden puzzles over Christmas and I think it has inspired a rather Rubic's cube quality in this new small plate. The background ink was French blue, let down with plate oil, then neat cadmium yellow was rolled over the top and , finally, patches of crimson pressed on with scrim.

Clearing the Decks

Winter approaches and a damp chill invades the studio. The heater takes the edge off this enough to work, but it is too damp to leave the work itself in there. So here is a reminder of how it all looked this summer for Open Up Sheffield. Now the walls are bare, a blank canvas on which to start again.

Inking Up!

Printing the new plates has been going well so far.

Nightmare

The first in a new series of urban landscapes. It has its basis in photographs I took in Greece. This print is a triple inking of Prussian Blue, rolled over with Cadmium Yellow and Crimson.

A Wood of my Own

Visiting the David Hockney exhibition "The Bigger Picture" this weekend at the RA was an inspiration. I had designed three of the Beely Wood prints to hang together to form an extended image. I am now thinking of printing them on a single sheet of paper next time I go to Pete's to use the big press.

Canopy

The plate is much larger than usual and so was printed in Peter York's studio. It is based on a beech tree we had to have felled.

The Fourth Tree

This print has an angular nature and is more abstract than its predecessors. I intend to take this further with a larger plate.

HD Tree

The first print is from the first etch.

Re-immersing the plate in the etching fluid has produced greater definition and some interesting details.

Snapshots from Greece

I have been looking through my holiday photos for inspiration for new plates, but decided I liked the images of derelict doorways just as they were. These near ruins sit cheek by jowl with occupied shops and homes. I think they are left to decay in order to avoid tax.

Quote Books

Here are my latest babies, tiny books made to illustrate descriptive quotes from classic texts. The left hand book holds lines from Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence. The other is inspired by John Steinbeck's description of the dawn as " ..the hour of pearl." in Cannery Row.

Skies over Lathkilldale

Photographs were taken on the late morning of Thursday May 12th.