angela harding
his shark. It’s life and death stuff, and creating what interests you without thinking about any commercial implications whatsoever.” Over the years, she has moved away from direct
observations toward more imaginative work. She cites Mary Fedden as a heroine and a touchstone for the way her work has changed: “I like that her work is not done literally from the landscape.” Having dedicated so much time to printmaking over
the last 30 years, Angela was keen to start painting again when she got her own studio. It made more financial sense, but also it was a contrast that she needed. “I find it much more satisfying to do both [painting and printmaking] – it’s just a better creative outlet to work between the two,” she says. “It allows me to use different aspects of myself.
Painting is very spontaneous but with printmaking there is much more housework and planning. They compliment each other.” That said, Angela found it frustrating when she began
coastline alone, fortified by little more than Mars Bars and egg on toast), but she does appreciate the social side of the workshop, too. “It’s important to remember how to speak to people,”
she jokes. “Here I have the dogs and the sheep and the birds but it’s brilliant to exchange information with my peers. You get to meet fellow professionals and, while it doesn’t make me change my imagery, I pick up technical tips – it’s great to speak to Peter Clayton about colour, for example.” The recurrent motif in Angela’s work is those birds,
“You can get absorbed in printmaking, but when you are
which she believes serve as a focal point to hold an image together. She has a wide breadth of ornithological knowledge, pointing out Norfolk curlews and dunnocks in her garden, but it is blackbirds that are perhaps her most constant theme: “They are very graphic and there is no messing – you know what a blackbird is.” Birds have been
painting every mark has to count. A simple painting puts up a fight”
important to Angela since childhood. While these days they feature prettily, dig a little deeper and her interest
in them is far more than just decorative or aesthetic. “When I was a little girl I used to collect feathers and I even had an orange suitcase full of feathers that I used to carry around with me instead of dollies,” she says. “I have always been fascinated.” At university, her dissertation was entitled The
ABOVE Heading Home, linocut and screenprint, 20x25cm RIGHT August Blackbird, linocut and screenprint, 30x20cm
16 Artists & Illustrators
Evocations of Birds and her own work featured them prominently. “I used to use a lot of road kill,” she says, matter-of-factly. “I brought in things I found on the road and so my work was more skeletal, much more ‘fine art’. It was a formative period in my life when I was thinking about imagery and meaning, a bit like Damien Hirst and
painting again. “You can get absorbed in printmaking, like knitting, but when you are painting every mark has to count. A simple painting is not simple. It might look simple but painting puts up a fight.” She pulls out a small canvas to illustrate her point, the
background painted a familiar seaside grey. There’s a white outline – a bird waiting to be made. It is already called Hawk in the Rain, after the Ted Hughes poem: “I love poetry and it gives me a big kick into what I am doing.” Angela’s work, which was black and white for years,
has begun to blossom into full colour. “The colours have become really important,” she says. “In painting, the colours are a starting point. What’s affected the colour more than anything is the lightness of this studio. I love the fact that you feel like you are in this field, right in the middle of the English countryside.” A&I
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