the beacon (2020)

The beacon series of linocuts is inspired by a crisp, icy walk up Beacon Hill in Ellesborough one February morning in 2020. The walk was new to me but I was awash with familiarity, a sense that the footprints twinkling in the frost could have been there for thousands of years, or from the deep future. The pathways that wound in looping circles around the hill, the pillow mound at the top, the rabbit warrens carved across slopes; evidence of centuries of life underneath and pushing up from the past. This experience bled into all my work for weeks to come. As the Covid pandemic took hold, and we were put into lockdown, it began to feel like a last open window, a talismanic journey taken from a different era.