‘Beorcrind’ framed monoprint, pigmented render, tissue paper, pen, charcoal pencil, pencil and acrylic, 71x100cm

One-off monoprint — only one available

‘Beorcrind’ was selected for the Contemporary British Printmakers show at Delamore Arts 2026, where it subsequently sold.

The scars, burls, and bark of birch trees — Beorcrind being an old Gaelic name for their bark — belie their relatively short lives as key pioneer species. That tension between fragility and resilience made birch an obvious contender for pushing the piece further, particularly through the use of tissue paper and charcoal pencil.

Working between these materials and the applied pigmented render was a joy. The layering and abrasion echo something of the tree’s own growth patterns and history — surface built up, marked, weathered, and revealed again.

I greatly enjoyed exploring birch within my recent Moor Trees series of smaller monoprints, so much so that I felt compelled to scale up and engage more deeply with the form and materiality of mature specimens. The flared base and shifting bark textures here became the structural focus.

This work forms one of a pair — the other being Betula Nebula. In both, I’ve used slightly fewer gelliplate prints than usual. That restraint felt necessary to explore greater structure, layering, and physicality within the composition.

With thanks to Jon Ranger for the original photograph taken in the New Forest, from which this piece developed.