Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Printmaker known for handmade British wildlife scenes on best-selling book covers; author of five books on the British countryside.
On the island
Eight records
The keepsakes
The book
In conversation
Presenter asks
4:25What do you mean by that [the 'housework' of printmaking]?
Well, when you when you paint, which I do paint as well, the options are so multiple, but when you print um you have a limited palette and you have a limited size to the press or the screen that you're using. And generally, if you're an illustrator or a commissioned illustrator, you've got limited time. So all those things are constraints that you have to work within.
Presenter asks
5:09Tell me about the idea of violence in creating your art and the appeal of that. What exactly do you mean?
I think it stems from, again, if you go back to art school days, that drawing was very implicit in what I was doing, but most of my drawing came from dead things that I found, and it's like a traditional way of learning your craft, really. And in those days, I was living away from the college in Melton Mowbray and would cycle into college and collect roadkill on the way in and tie it to the handlebars. And that became very much my subject matter. As well as when I got back home, I was living in a little cottage. I would just boil up the heads and have a display of skulls.
Presenter asks
9:20What did he [your father] do with his degree? What did he do for a job?
Um well he actually wanted to stay on but the family said no, that he had to go and get a job and he worked for the British Council. He was in Izmir working in Turkey and one of his famous stories was that he was a very young, quite nervous man and he'd had an accident during the war which is why he wasn't in the services. He had really shaky hands. By a sort of series of circumstances, he'd only just arrived in Turkey. He found himself representing Britain on Bastille Day at the French embassy and was quite nervous about it. And yet there he was meeting the ambassador, the ambassador's wife and all the dignitaries. And they were served with a variety of cakes to which my father says he doesn't know why he did it, but he went for the meringue with cream. And with his shaky hands and his nervousness, the tension mounted on this meringue until he was opposite the ambassador's wife, who had had an ample chest on display, and there was a minor explosion.
Adam Nicolson
I'm going to take Adam Nicholson's Bird School, A Beginner in the Wood. This one I particularly love because it's about birds that we see every day and it's about getting to know them better. And it's a bit naughty because it has got Thomas Buick's illustrations at the back as well.
The luxury
Three metres of prepared lino, with a glass of champagne every two feet
Well, my luxury is actually when I buy Lino, it comes in a roll, which is usually about three meters, which is a so that's that's a lot of Lino. But I would like a three metre roll of Lino ready prepared... So you paint it black so that as you chisel you can see what you're doing. But every two feet I would like a strategic glass of champagne to encourage the
Presenter asks
13:04What about your mum, Joan? She studied art. Was she able to pursue that as a career?
Well my mum was unusual because she came from a very working class family, there's five of them in a tiny terraced house behind the Mitchlin factory in Stoke. So she really did reach high ambition by getting to go to art college and she studied sculpture in the 1950s and actually applied for a job to work in as a stonemason in a church. She applied by letter and signed the letter J Wood and sent her samples of her drawings and was lucky to get that job but when she turned up they were expecting John Wood not Joan Wood. So yeah she did that for a while before we were born and then she went into teaching and actually went into ceramics. She did ceramics for all of her life.
Presenter asks
19:51Your parents divorced when you were in your teens. What impact did that have on you?
Well, it's sort of we'd gone from this very conventional, aspiring, middle-class family, Catholic, the Catholicism was very important, going to church on a Sunday and all the feast days in between, you know, there's a lot of time spent at church to all of a sudden the whole thing sort of imploding. And I think that's sort of partly why we all ended up at art school as well. You know, it was like we were all a bit lost, I think, really. But at the time, I would have been fifteen, sixteen, and I officially went with my mum as we didn't have a house to go to. So me and my little sister were with my granddad, sharing a bed, not just a room, a bed with pillows down the middle to stop us fighting. And my elder sister was with my dad in my other grandmother's. But eventually everything obviously got sorted out and it became apparent that my little sister, even though she was very little at the time, she would only been 10, 11, wasn't going to stay with my mother and went to live with my father who hadn't been awarded the finances from the breakup. So my mum got the money, as it did happen in those days, thinking, I think the judge thinking that, you know, to provide for the children. But she got the money, but she didn't take the children really.
Presenter asks
27:40You lost your first daughter, Lydia, very prematurely. It must have been a devastating experience. How did you cope?
It was, it was. And I feel for every woman who's had to go through that, and every father, of course, and it was difficult for Tim as well. And pregnancy was not an easy route for me. After that, I fell pregnant again and ended up in hospital again. And it was very touch and go whether I kept Holly, my daughter. And I remember seeing the scan with all the blood clots around her and feeling so responsible. You know, you had Holly and then you had your son George as well. Were you supported? Were you able to talk about the difficulties that you had in having your family with people? You know, as you say, the conversation then wasn't where it is now. It's difficult enough now to talk about baby loss. I will never forget, obviously, that daughter. But there was, I think, of those days a sort of sweep it under the carpet and get on with it, sort of a bit more attitude, really. And thankfully, I think those things have changed.
“I think it stems from, again, if you go back to art school days, that drawing was very implicit in what I was doing, but most of my drawing came from dead things that I found, and it's like a traditional way of learning your craft, really. And in those days, I was living away from the college in Melton Mowbray and would cycle into college and collect roadkill on the way in and tie it to the handlebars. And that became very much my subject matter. As well as when I got back home, I was living in a little cottage. I would just boil up the heads and have a display of skulls.”
“I will never forget, obviously, that daughter. But there was, I think, of those days a sort of sweep it under the carpet and get on with it, sort of a bit more attitude, really. And thankfully, I think those things have changed.”
“I thank my children for setting that discipline because all those years back when they were little, when I think I had a lot more energy, if I'm honest, I would put them to bed about half past seven and then I would always start work again, you know, and I kept that discipline for years of my own time of making things being in the evening.”
“I think it's an unknown thing that actually you're getting hardly anything. You're giving a brief and a synopsis. In the early days, that would be a very short synopsis and quite a tight brief. But as I became more established as an illustrator of books, I was given more trust to do more things that I felt were the right thing.”