Let me see you shake your tail feather' is a screen print of the Black Grouse and female Grey Hen. It amused me to see the over the top flamboyance of the male with his distinctive red wattle over the eye and lyre shaped tail which fans out to show white under tail feathers, in comparison to the understated elegance of small brown-grey female. In my work I take detailed drawings down to there most basic form and then play around with pattern and texture. All shapes are cut from paper and then a screen is made and colours layered to create the print. My influences come from vintage children's illustrations, artists such as Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and more recently print makers such as Jane Ormes.

I chose to print the Black Grouse (Lyrurus Textrix) as it was one the fastest declining bird in the UK and on list of endangered species. However, with the dedicated effort of conservation groups over the last two decades the dramatic decline has not only been halted but turned around and the numbers in the Northern Pennines are slowly rising.
Despite being an endangered species the Black Grouse can still legally be shot for sport in areas where productivity is high. Why anyone would want to kill an animal for sport baffles me, but to be legally able to shoot these endangered birds for sport albeit with guidance from the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust seems mad.

A new bestiary and herbarium for at risk species by artists from Northern Print.

“Endless Forms Most Beautiful” is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Thanks to National Lottery players, we have been able to support visits, new printmaking and school’s programme for this project.

Northern Print artists bring together traditional printmaking and the natural world with a series of new prints highlighting the diversity of species that are categorised as ‘at risk’.

The ‘endless forms’ include marine life; plants; birds; insects and mammals with many familiar and much-loved species as well as less known and intriguing creatures that have captured the imagination and hearts of Northern Print’s artists.

This exhibition of 45 new prints has been made following a series of visits to our region’s natural history collections and habitats and represents the tiniest tip of the iceberg of our natural world under threat.

The artwork includes a range of approaches and printmaking processes – including heritage craft skills also deemed at risk including letterpress and mould-made papers