Three Tree Hill

Another one of a kind 6"x6" print.  Recently sold on Etsy and on its way to China, where it will join a number of my other prints.

Mabou Coal Mines Beach

I was just in Cape Breton and took the opportunity to go down to Mabou Coal Mines Beach.  I have only known this beach in the summer and it is the same, but different. All of the colours were darker and cooler

The tide was high and the day was cold, but still - very still.  And very misty in the distance. The water was flat, flat, flat with only ripples.  It didn't actually disappear into the sky, but if it had been mistier it would have. My sister and I walked as far as we could without walking into the Northumberland Strait.  I tested the water and it was the sort of cold that would numb you in seconds.

The beach didn't have too much shingle on it, but high up on the beach were mounds and mounds of fine graded stones.  Not much else, some seaweed, a bit of driftwood, a few shells.  No dead cows.  We did once find a dead cow here.

Leaning Willow & Double Brown Willow Prints

Not exactly a bamboo print.  Actually not a bamboo print at all.  I have gone back into my boxes of small blocks and printed up a number of 6" x 6" one of a kind prints that I have listed in my Etsy shop.

This is one way of using up little bits ink leftover from other prints.  This means that the prints tend to resemble one another in their colour selections.  I made a lot of these prints in 2007 and you could tell the different print runs as the colourway changed significantly from print run to print run.

Well, all of those prints are long gone, but I recently came across a small stash of paper ripped to the 6" x 6" size, so waste not - want not.  I'll keep making them until the stash is used up.

Leaning Bamboo can be found here and Double Brown Willow can be found here.

Kyoto Bamboo Print

When I got back from that trip to Japan in 2008 I immediately made prints featuring bamboo.  Small prints, medium sized prints, great big prints, colourful prints - no black and white prints though.  That short walk through the bamboo forest certainly inspired an awful lot of printing in a very short time.

Well I've started on bamboo prints again.  I love the verticality of the trunks and the fact that I can overprint them and make a real forest.  Not that I did that in this print.  I think I was in a stark mood when I made this.  The print is made of three blocks, just placed where I wanted them and taped down before I rolled the ink on.  I am getting a feeling I will do red bamboo next.  Or red and black.

I have never yet captured the feeling of that forest.

Kyoto Bamboo can be found here.

Kyoto Bamboo

When I was in Kyoto I visited a number of temples which were all in beautiful and serene garden settings. At one of the temples there was a bamboo forest with a small road winding up the hill. There was a breeze and I could hear the tops of the bamboo hitting one another with a clacking sound - so unlike the sounds of the forests I know. Running along side the road was a low stone wall and set on top of the wall was a fence made of some sort of straw like material all woven together. It was sublime.


I walked up the road listening to the bamboo clacking away and thought that I never wanted to leave.  Can you just imagine walking around that corner of the road and just disappearing?  I could.