Early Years, 2025

Early Years brings my interest in nurseries as a subject for painting into the language of printmaking. Early Years is a term used to describe children’s developmental provision in the years before they start school. Each etching depicts children in this phase of their life, with a pared-back palette of colours allowing me to enjoy the quality of line that etching offers. Spoon Fed depicts my own daughter eating lunch as a two-year-old, Comforted and Prepared show children in the forest setting of the outdoor nursery both my children have attended, and in Settled the little girl at the centre of the image looks back directly, interested in my presence there documenting these acts of care which are most often out of sight.

It’s been both enjoyable and challenging to work with etching again so many years after exploring it as a student. Working with Mike Taylor at Paupers Press, I’ve had 10 years of getting to grips with lithography, but the etching technique has felt like learning a completely different language, opening up a new way of image-making in printmaking for me. I spent time studying Mary Cassatt’s and Paula Rego’s etchings of women and children for some inspiration on how to approach it. The first stage of soft ground etching felt like drawing in the way I make preparatory studies for my paintings. Then over the course of five months, we added more to the plates to add spatial depth and dimension – aquatint, sugar lift, a subtle base colour and then finally a touch of watercolour to highlight some areas and bring into focus the human relationships being portrayed in the prints.