A Postcard From the Barn - September 2026 a peahen feather & an invite
an iridescent encounter
I spent a warm day at Oxcombe yesterday, setting up for their art and ceramics exhibition. Boxes of work carried in, beautiful prints and linen textile art hung, spacing fussed over more than it possibly needed to be, but that's always the way before a show opens.
While I was there, I had a lovely encounter with one of the peahens, she came right up close, unbothered, and left behind one of her feathers. I picked it up without thinking, that soft bronze down giving way at the tip to a fan of brilliant iridescent green. Now its resting against the woven linen I'm currently working on. Small, iridescent, fascinating, I couldn't put it down or my camera for quite a while. I even postponed tea! It feels like the kind of quiet detail I want to capture.
In the UK there's the old superstition that peacock feathers are unlucky to bring indoors, all down to the eye markings, said to leave people with the general feeling that having them around invites bad luck, tracing back to old beliefs the eye held a touch of the evil eye watching the house. But peahen feathers seem to escape all that, they don't carry those circular eye markings called ocelli the way the male's tail does, so I like to think mine came with no bad luck attached, instead perhaps even a bit of quiet good fortune, from a curious bird who wandered over to say hello.
I do love this time of year. Out in the woods I've been finding fungi and shelf mushrooms pushing out of old bark, pale shelf fungus perched on weathered, deeply cracked bark, peeling back in places to show the raw wood beneath. One particular tree looked as if it had kintsugi repairs.
Overhead, the geese have been noisy about it, telling everyone within earshot that they're off on their travels.
I've also been collecting oak galls, ready to make that deep umber ink, one of my favourite autumn jobs and always a bit of alchemy.
Tonight is the private view for the Oxcombe Art & Ceramics Exhibition, and I’m really looking forward to being one of more than 40 local artists and ceramicists taking part this year. Here is your invite to the PV- no ticket needed, just me inviting you!
I’ll be exhibiting in the Visitor Centre, located in The Coach House — one of the first buildings you’ll see on your right as you drive into the beautiful Oxcombe grounds.There’s lots to discover up the little rise too, with a glass artist and woodworkers working alongside me from Friday onwards, so it’s well worth having a wander around.
I’ll have a selection of my prints and textile wall art on display to purchase, and I’ll be there to say hello and chat about my work.
📍 Oxcombe, Horncastle LN9 6LU
📅 18–20 September
⏰ 10am–3.30pm
🎟️ Adults £2
Under 15s free
There’ll also be demonstrations, creative activities and refreshments from Very Cool Coffee Bus, Crepe Lucette and Holly’s Garden Kitchen.
I hope to see you very soon.
what Is Precious- a new iteration of this exhibition, with new work from Design Nation members, at Waterside Arts, Sale
I made the trip to Sale on Tuesday for 'What Is Precious;'a touring exhibition which grew out of Design Nation's Sustainability and Ethical Practice group.
It started life as a small eight maker showcase back in 2024 and has grown with every outing, 19 makers by last year's Farnham showing, and now 21 of us at Waterside Arts.
It was a networking meet up alongside the show, and I turned up five minutes late, which turned out to be a happy accident, as the only free seat was next to Kathryn Stevens, a ceramicist whose work I've admired for a while, (her pieces are bottom middle above) all wild clay and that lovely textural, earthy palette.
We ended up in a great chat about pigment making techniques and a mutual love of vegetarian katsu and sushi, comparing notes on clay, colour, cloth.
If you're in the area, the exhibition is on at Waterside until 24 October, and you can see her work alongside my four pieces of earth pigment textile wall art, plus plenty more from the group, with everything available to buy on the day, too.
While I was there, I also went along to a photography workshop, so some of the lesser used settings and speciality lenses on my DSLR might finally start earning their keep.
the 20 Market
I'm particularly pleased to be taking part in The 20 Market this Friday, celebrating the 20th edition of the Little Book of Small Businesses. It's such a fun evening, so if you're local I'm sure you'd enjoy yourselves.
It's on Friday 18th September, 6 to 9pm at Southside, LN5 8DW, with a lovely mix of makers and creatives from across Lincolnshire.
I will say, I'm a little busy at the moment. If you've read my newsletter carefully you may have already spotted that I'm taking part in two events on the same day, (this and the daytime event at Oxcombe). And this one's not to be missed either. Polly, who runs the Little Book of Small Businesses, is a real champion of artisans here in Lincolnshire, and twenty editions in is a proper milestone, so it's sure to be an extra special evening.
photopolymer exposing at Leicester Print Workshop
I've also been having an exciting time returning to a technique I haven't visited in a while, solar plate/ photopolymer printing. I've spent a few days becoming friends with the new-to-me UV exposure unit, at Leicester Print Workshop, thinking about tonal variation, step wedge tests and exposing a batch of plates, some abstract, some drawn, from botanical photographs. The lime green above shows the plate post exposure. in a waterbath as the emulsion is washed out. There's lots of timing to get right in making these plates so I really need full focus. Next time, I may take headphones! I'm really excited about these prints and they have already had some admiring comments from those who have seen them.
I've used a gentle, nostalgic sepia on the pieces, and mixed my own Payne's grey for others, that soft blue grey feels right for the quieter images. The sepia is something I will mention in a new blog series I am working on called, 'Unearthing Colour' where I am doing more reasearch into the colours I use in both my textile and printmaking work.
The plates are exposed now, but not all yet printed, and I'm looking forward to the inking and wiping, something which takes more time than many folk realise. They have working titles already, though nothing is signed yet. More hours in a day please!
They'll be a limited edition and I'll be sharing them first in my next postcard. I'm really pleased with how they're looking so far, and I hope they bring a bit of the same peace to you that they've brought me while making them. Do let me know in the comments what you think. Its good to know that people read to the end of my blog posts!
These prints have given me a proper renewed spark of inspiration for working with photographic imagery again.
Until next time...
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