Taken with my phone- boats on the river Alt, the Irish sea beyond. In the foreground - prehistoric woodland remains. What a place.

 Installations - provided by the tide.

A strange & lovely plant in the sand dunes.

Above are all  Merseyside coast pictures - I'm working hard towards the Liverpool exhibition at the end of August & have decided to do a new series of work on the coast there, where I often played and messed about as a child and teenager. I have recently spent happy (very hot) hours on the beach at Hightown and beyond, sketching and taking photos. Here's a few images from the last time I was there. I'm still working in the landscape here in the north Peaks area as well.  About to start preparing some lino relief and intaglio prints... been quite a while, so I'm a bit nervous. The whole thing of having a solo exhibition at this stage in my renewed career is a mixture of fear and a feeling that this is exactly the right thing to do, even if it's a complete embarrassment!! 

So here's a few I'm working on at the moment. I've got pictures by the St Ives painters, amongst others,  in my head. I want to convey how it feels to be in these lonely, mysterious places - I wish I had a good enough recording of the sounds of the beach. The bells on the boats clanking in the breeze, the seabirds calling, distant voices. The heat... I wish I'd had the nerve to ask the naked couple if I could paint them! The last, monochrome image is from Coombes Rocks, the quarry ridge rising above the Cheshire plains. 

I think... this is working!! I'm back.