Meet the Maker - Angela Harding

About Angela Harding

Angela Harding lives in the village of Wing in Rutland, which is actually the smallest county in the UK. Her studio is nestled at the bottom of her garden and houses everything she could possibly need for her craft - including even a recently acquired Rochat Albion press. Her studio looks out over the farmland landscape of Rutland. Fields of sheep and the soft greens, greys and blues of this land form the backdrop for her paintings and prints.

Angela Harding's inspiration

Like many of our fantastically talented artists here, Angela has always been strongly inspired by the beauty of British wildlife. She has always had a particular love for the birds who commonly frequent our gardens - such as the blackbirds that have claimed her garden as their own and the gaggle of sparrows who live amongst the ivy at the front of her house.

However, Angela's muses don't just stick to dry land. Many stunning seabirds also feature heavily in her work such as Curlews, Redshanks and Oystercatchers. In the summer Angela and her husband Mark take their little wooden sail boat out to the Norfolk and Suffolk coast with a sketchbook ready in hand. She takes advantage of these lovely trips as the perfect opportunity to record the birds they see in scribbles, so that later in the studio she can develop them into more formal designs.

Angela does not work from life but instead uses a combination of drawing and imagination which is what gives Angela's gorgeous work such character and unique style.

What techniques does Angela use?

Angela Harding was first introduced to the world of print making back in 1979 during her time as an art student at Leicester Polytechnic. During her student years she primarily worked as an etcher but in 2008 she made the switch to working in lino and silkscreen printing - and this is what she mainly uses to this day.

So what is lino cutting? We start with a design which is carefully cut into a sheet of lino or vinyl using a V shaped chisel or a gouge. The uncarved represents the mirror image of the design. Once Angela has carved out her design, the lino block is inked with a roller and then impressed onto the paper. While the actual printing process can be done by hand, Angela uses a Rochate Albion Press (a replica of a Victorian press), ensuring the perfect clean print.

The other printing technique Angela often uses is silkscreen printing. This involves using a screen of woven mesh which has very fine holes and a handcut stencil to block out the areas of the mesh where you don't want the ink to go.The open areas of the stencil allow for the ink to be pushed through onto the chosen surface using a squeegee. For each detailed layer of colour a new stencil is needed. Due to the hand cut nature of the screen printing stencils and the lino block, these two techniques look fantastic when layered together.