Catherine Headley

Artist Statement

Hodgkin said, 'Prints are made by people who already have an image, not for people who are searching for one'.  Paul Cornwall-Jones said,  'If you know what you are going to do, you'll make a print.  If you don't know what you are going to do, you'll make a mess.'    

From a visual memory I create an abstract equivalent, which becomes manifest when I apply scalpel to plate.  The fact that I cannot change anything is liberating. I work in collagraph and dry point.
 
My  inspiration comes from my visits to Penwith in Cornwall, a land littered with the detritus of  long ago, from Bronze Age cromlechs and Celtic crosses to the ruined engine houses of its abandoned tin mines.  The moors are a pagan world of standing stones and sweeps of bracken crowned by granite cairns.  My colours are the gorse and the heather, sea and sky, the strident greens and yellows and orange-gold of lichens on granite and a multitude of greys.  My imagery comes from the stones.  I am excited whenever I come across a menhir or quoit, stone circle, barrow or carn.  Most recently I have visited three fogous  (Cornish for cave), including the one in the Iron Age courtyard house settlement of Carn Euny.  A low stone lined passage leads underground to a magnificent corbelled room, more than two metres high and four metres across.  It is not know why these chambers were built, whether for refuge, religious ceremonies or storage, a mystery indeed.