'I am interested in the moment when drawing moves beyond observation - when a flower, a vessel or a landscape becomes part of a pattern of memory and association. Etching allows me to transform those drawings, rather than simply reproduce them, and that space between the observed and the imagined is where the work begins to unfold.'
Drawing is at the centre of Sally Spens's practice. Whether she is looking at a botanical specimen, the structure of a fossil, the surface of a landscape or the changing perspective of water, observation becomes the beginning of a process of transformation.
Her etchings are made by hand using intaglio techniques on copper plate. The process allows a drawn line to be translated, deepened and altered through the stages of biting, inking and printing. Spens hand-inks her plates and frequently combines print with painted elements, allowing colour and line to build gradually across the surface. The resulting works retain the intimacy of drawing while possessing the depth, variation and material presence of the print medium.
The relationship between printmaking and textile design is central to understanding her work. Spens's years designing textiles taught her to think in terms of rhythm, repetition, balance and the movement of pattern across a surface. Her botanical etchings carry something of the richness and delicacy of cloth, while the discipline of printmaking gives those images a different physical and intellectual dimension.
Her experience of working in Japan has been particularly influential. The seven-year Kawashima commission, designing textiles for yukata in Kyoto, brought her into direct contact with a culture in which distinctions between fine art, design and craftsmanship are less rigid. That experience continues to inform the balance, restraint and attention to surface found in her prints.
Nature is a recurring subject, but Spens's work is not straightforward botanical illustration. Flowers, leaves, geological forms and landscapes are selected for their visual structures as much as their identities. Their shapes become components within a larger composition, allowing the work to move between observation and abstraction.
In Flowers Across the Ocean and Flowers Follow Snow on the Silk Road, botanical imagery becomes a way of considering cultural exchange: the movement of plants, decorative motifs, textiles and ceramics across continents and through history.
In Ancient Nature and Earthshine, geological forms and fossils provide another point of departure. Looking closely and drawing become a means of imagining ancient landscapes and the forms of life and habitation that might have occupied them. Shapes begin to suggest figures, animals and dwellings, allowing the imagery to hover between the observed and the imagined.
Elsewhere, the landscape is experienced directly. From the Waterline looks upwards from the sea while swimming in the Helford, translating the particular freedom and altered perspective of being in open water into a sequence of images. The Valley Garden, inspired by Trebah Garden, develops the landscape through multiple viewpoints, creating a more fragmented and immersive sense of place.
Ceramics have also become an important subject within Spens's work. Her Moon Jars and earlier Imagined Pots series explore the relationship between drawing and the vessel, combining remembered and observed forms with the visual language of botanical and landscape imagery.
The vessel becomes more than an object to be depicted. It provides a structure around which memory, pattern and association can gather - connecting Spens's interest in ceramics with her experience of textile design and her longstanding fascination with Japanese culture.
Across these bodies of work, there is a consistent tension between precision and imagination. Spens begins with something seen, remembered or researched, but the finished print is not intended simply to record it. Through line, repetition, colour and the physical processes of etching, the original subject is transformed.
The result is a body of printmaking that is meticulous without being rigid, decorative without being merely ornamental, and rooted in the natural world while allowing space for ambiguity and interpretation.