Lyn Matheson

Lyn is lucky enough to have lived in Wensleydale for the past 16 years – a beautiful and abundant source of inspiration for her linocut art work.  Wildlife that inhabits her garden and surroundings; drystone walls undulating their way across the rich green landscape, patterned by sheep and barns; plentiful rivers; secret waterfalls and unspoilt villages.  Every walk reveals something magical - curlews circling over the fields; a family of hares glimpsed in long grass on summer evenings; the white flash of a resident barn owl; lanes laced with cow parsley and hawthorn trees shaped by the prevailing winds.  
 
Surrounded by all this glorious inspiration, Lyn works at her kitchen table from where she can see her bird filled cottage garden and the fields beyond.  Her ideas are first drawn in her sketchbook, and reworked until she is happy with them.  A variety of linocut tools are used to carve out the design, before using inks to colour the block and then carefully hand burnishing the picture onto to archival paper. When the paper is finally peeled away from the lino block the result is always a surprise, and no two ‘prints’ are ever the same!