My time as a Wildcard on Sky Art's Landscape Artist of the Year

I can’t tell you how thrilled I was to open that email last Spring and received the news that I’d been selected for Sky Art’s Landscape Artist of the Year as a Wildcard. I’ve watched the show for years and always loved the of the challenge that four hours and a brand new landscape presented.

I’ve talked before about how linocut printmaking is the only thing really in my life that I’ve ever felt I was ‘good’ at, like it’s a superpower that I’ve worked hard over the years to craft. LAOTY feels to me like going to the Olympics!

 

I was able to choose from a handful of locates and associated dates. Despite my art primarily depicting natural landscapes, I was intrigued by the challenge that an urban environment would present (that, and the filming date was my birthday), so I gleefully requested to join the Wildcards at St. Pancras Basin in London.

The email team were very friendly and informative and we corresponded as I signed the various forms and provided more details. Before I knew it, the date was upon me. As I was travelling down from Norwich, I had to book a hotel the night before (little sleep was had from excitement though).

You can obviously only take what you can carry to the location. Whilst some folks brought friends or family to the drop-off location, I was alone and so loaded myself up like a donkey and arrived very early on a morning last June to the filming site. I had a backpack full of my supplies (carving tools, inks, paper, lino blocks, etc) and of course I needed to be able to sit down so had a chair and a table strapped to my body!

Everyone huddled in a ball of nervous energy waiting to see what the day would bring and the production crew set about giving us instructions, everyone chatting and meeting their fellow Wildcards. There wasn’t a whiff of competition in the negative sense, everyone was just eager to chat and I loved hearing about where folks had travelled from and what kind of art they created. I met some lovely artists there that I exchanged Instagrams with and continue to follow to this day, in awe of their talent both on the day and since. A little group of us sat together like it was our first day at kindergarten - it was very wholesome.

 

After filming the ‘walk’ (Artists and equipment walking towards the creating site), we settled down on a big patch of grass in Gasholder Park, close to Granary Square. The view was immense - and chaotic. A canal rammed full of canal boats, high rises, noise, train tracks and passing trains, a water tower, graffiti - everything you could think of. Picking a subject was certainly a challenge.

 

Surprisingly for a neurodivergent gal who can get quite overwhelmed by noise, I was completely at ease. I just felt pure delight at the prospect of spending the day in the sunshine making a linocut!

I quickly decided on a reduction linocut of the canal boats, train overheads and water tower, figuring I could create some great textures from the water reflection and barge features. I normally work either multiblock, jigsaw or single blocks in linocut. I’ve created reductions before, so knew the process well, but figured I wouldn’t be able to create such a details scene if I was carving multiple blocks ‘from scratch’. Although there wasn’t a giant clock ticking, I was aware I had A LOT of carving, ink mixing and printing ahead of me, so I set to work.

 

I wanted to reflect the heat of the London Summer and use non-traditional colours for the landscape so went with a warm colour palette of yellow, orange and red. Once the design with sketched, I used tracing paper to flip to design (key to ensure I wasn’t creating a backwards landscape) and went over my pencil lines on the lino block with permanent marker to ensure I could see them through multiple layers of ink.

I carved and printed the based colour (warm yellow) first - mixing the ink by hand on a glass plate (I had lots of tubes and a palette knife with me) and then battling the wind to hand print onto Japanese HoSho paper (my favourite) with a wooden spoon. The second layer followed an hour or so later (warm orange) and then it was time for the final block to be carved and printed, right at the last minute.

My shoes were off, I had my sunhat atop my head and large water bottle by my side as I merrily did my thing for the day. You actually get a little longer than four hours because the day is punctuated by filming and chatting, etc. I was chuffed when the production team said they’d like to bring one of the presenters over (Stephen Mangan) for an interview. I was quite nervous about this, keen to make a good impression by representing linocut printmaking well - to my knowledge I was the only linocut printmaker there, too. 

Stephen and the production team were incredibly warm and welcoming - Stephen put me at ease right away with his friendly charm and we were soon chatting away about linocut and trains and it being my birthday and I forgot the camera was even there.

 

The day absolutely flew by. I kept an eye on the time, conscious of where I needed to be at each stage of the reduction print to ensure I completed it on time. If I could have changed one thing about the day, it would have been to do a single colour linocut or maybe finished my key block earlier so the judges didn’t have to look at random blobs of yellow and orange before the final block added all the detail - what must they have thought! It didn’t detract from the day and I look back on the experience very fondly.

I’ll pop a photo of my final linocut print below. Considering it was carved and printed start to finish on my lap in Central London, I’m actually really pleased with it. She is proudly framed on my studio, reminding me of the day. I’ve named her ‘Disco Volante’ after one of the barges moored in the canal.