Eclogue I: your pastures all choked with rushes and mire, etching, 16x20cm

This etching was made in response to Samuel Palmer’s etchings of Virgil’s Eclogues. I was interested in its themes of displacement and immigration and nostalgia for the land. Palmer brought his idealised Kentish fruitfulness to the series and I wanted to make a Welsh version. The landscape of course is very different and I chose lines from the Eclogues to bring that out. This one is called ‘your pastures all choked with rushes and mire’. It’s a view of the Preseli moor behind our house. I was thinking about agriculture, use and beauty, and how these sour and windswept lands are supporting local lives and local sheep and the sense of belonging, despite being seen as ‘not very good land’. 
Etching on Hahnemuhle Natural heavy etching paper.
Edition of 120.