I have wanted to bring back my Meet The Maker blogs for a while, and I’ve started with a maker who has become a very close friend and who helps me run our local BS4 Arts Trail too. I love Becca’s beautiful lino prints and her passion and knowledge of all pollinators, bugs and creepy crawlies. I really loved reading her answers to my questions and I hope you do too!
1. What’s your favourite plant or flower?
I don’t think I could ever pick just one, but there are some flowers that I really love seeing as the seasons change – crocuses, wild tulips and snowdrops at the end of winter, cuckoo flower, bluebells and foxgloves in spring, viper’s bugloss, knapweed, and a sea of purple heather in summer.
2. What’s your favourite tree?
This is really hard to answer too, but I love an ancient tree, so oaks and yews always draw me in. But I also love seeing the tangled bones of an old laid hedge in a holloway – low branches all fused together like roots at the base of what are now mature trees. It’s haunting and magical.
3. Coast, woods, mountains or meadows — where do you feel most at home in nature?
I’m not sure I’ll be able to answer any of these questions easily! I grew up in the Forest of Dean, so woods feel like they’re a part of me, but I also spent a lot of time living by the sea in Falmouth, and close to the Peak District, so all these landscapes are familiar and special to me – I don’t think I could live without any of them!
4. What’s your favourite thing to draw, and what drew you to it?
This evolves all the time, but I’ve been drawing a lot of birds and flowers recently. I’ve been sitting out in the garden sketching, and there’s always something new to inspire me. This time of year, the busy birds pique my interest
5. What made you start making?
I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember, and interested in wildlife for just as long. I’m lucky that my parents always encouraged my interests in wildlife and drawing, and never saw being an artist as a barrier to earning a living, so art has never felt like a hobby. I grew up seeing it as a talent to be proud of, and a skill to cultivate. I also went to a school that supported students who wanted to do more with their art. It was just a little rural comprehensive, but the art teachers were amazing.
6. What does a perfect making day look like for you?
The perfect day would have no emails, and nothing else to do but work on my own stuff – either sketching out in the sunshine, figuring out a composition and researching plants, wildlife and folklore to build a narrative, maybe carving some lino too. I love working on illustration commissions, but it’s such a luxury to have time to work on something for myself with no looming deadlines!
7. What’s the last thing in nature that stopped you in your tracks?
I’m constantly doubling back to see a bug or a bee, but I think the most exciting thing that I’ve had to stop and watch recently has been the swifts. They’ve just returned, so whenever I hear them screeching past above me, I can’t help but stop and watch them swooping and playing.
8. Which season shows up most in your work, and why?
Spring or summer, probably, as I tend to print a lot of flowers and wildlife, but I can’t resist drawing a leafless tree or a gnarly hedge, so winter’s always lurking too!
9. What do you hope people feel when they buy your designs?
I hope they appreciate my artwork on an aesthetic level, but I also hope that they recognise the deep engagement I have with the subject matter, and that they’re inspired to learn more about the wildlife, species and habitats I explore. I rarely convey species in isolation, as the connections between different species is vital to their survival, and I think we often forget this.
10. What are you working on right now, or what’s coming next?
I’ve got a couple of events coming up in June – the BS4 Arts Trail of course, on the 13th & 14th June, which we’re organising together with Jess Corbett, (I’ll be at St Anne’s Open House with heaps of other artists for the Trail weekend) and a group exhibition at Heart of The Tribe gallery in Glastonbury, which opens 25th June. So right now I’m busy printing loads of stuff ready for those.
I’m also working on a couple of ideas for new prints. One is inspired by Blodeuwedd, a tragic figure from the Mabinogion, and the other by the birds gathering nesting material and bugs in my garden. I’d really like to get one of them finished before the BS4 Arts Trail, but I’m about to start an exciting new commission too, so we’ll see how far I get!
You can see all of Becca’s beautiful, nature-inspired lino cut prints, lino printed cards and tea towels in the online shop
