I am still in the process of making this series of collages, inspired by the forest of Le Touquet in Northern France. I start by working directly on to a silkscreen, taking a print by forcing the paint through the screen on to the paper beneath with a rubber blade, or squeegee. The paint has to be washed off the screen as soon as possible to avoid it drying out and damaging the silk, so this is a very energetic business, which requires me to paint, print, and wash out pretty fast. By the end of a session I have three or four different but related monoprints which I can then start cutting about to make collages, sometimes partly overpainting them in acrylic or oil. Wielding a scissors on something one has just spent a hectic day to make certainly requires a degree of ruthlessness and feels quite dangerous, but I love working from start to finish with my own printed material in this way.

As you can imagine, this process leaves me with lots of lovely small printed fragments and being a 'waste not, want not' kind of person, I love using them for more collages on postcard-sized blocks of wood covered with watercolour paper. This has resulted in a series of rich, jewel-like and reasonably-priced 'collectibles', little pieces which I call 'mini-s'. I have also started making a series of 'mini-s' of various sizes about some of my favourite motifs and symbols - please click on the 'mini' link to have a look at them..