Lucy Ward

I was lucky enough to go on the Mawddach residency with my friend Catherine Gerbrands. I hoped for inspiration from the incredible landscape and the chance to work on some practical things too, such as trying to loosen up my marks and doing more sketching outside. I gained all of those things, but what I didn’t expect was for the residency to have such an impact on me personally as well.

We explored the local area and I was drawn to the woods near the house, full of moss scattered with navelwort and wonderfully twisty oak and ash trees. I also liked the hawthorn and rowan on the exposed hillside, which had been warped into permanently windswept shapes, juxtaposed against angular rocks. The estuary was always spectacular and I spent a lot of time staring out of the windows, watching the light, weather and tides and how they changed the view so much.

I learnt a lot about sketching outside, not least that it takes me ages and I need to push through my impatience and bad drawings at the start and stubbornly wait until I’m really seeing and my breath slows, to end up with sketches I like or are useful. I loved drawing the trees, which started to feel like old friends after a while.

I brought mount board scraps with me with the intention of drawing outside and then making collagraph/card cut prints straight from the sketches, but in the end I liked the sketches too much and didn’t want to cut them up. I did really enjoy drawing on the mount board, though. This is something I will use as part of my prep in future. It felt more permanent than drawing in a sketchbook, so I found I stuck with the sketch rather than giving up and turning the page, but I didn’t feel like it was too precious to use either, because it would just be recycled otherwise. And I can always make a collagraph from it if I want to.

I had all sorts of plans for prints, but with limited time in this amazing place, I didn’t want to spend too long making plates. I switched to making monotypes to record the shapes and shadows of the tides and sandbanks, and the fast-changing light and weather. This was particularly important for night scenes, which didn’t show up in photos so I worked on monotypes with the images fresh in my mind, or late into the night looking out of the window. I allowed myself to be experimental and take risks, because I wasn’t printing with any finished goal in mind. In the drypoint and collagraph plates I made, I tried to keep things loose and sketchy rather than being really particular like I would normally be. It’s an energy I would like to take into my future work.

Most of my prints are landscapes, but they are also a part of me, metaphors for things in my life or emotions I’m processing, and it has been a tough few years. After this residency, I’m feeling focused and hopeful, and I realise that this experience is something I really needed to reignite my love of printmaking and push my work forward.

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