"Morlais Castle" – The Last Days of Steam, Henley-on-Thames

This work was created especially for the RGA 87th Annual Exhibition entitled Hooray Henley! It was chosen as joint winner of the Marie Dyson Award 2017.

One of the main reasons I joined the Reading Guild of Artists was because of the workshops. Every two weeks during the winter there is something else to try out, be it from experimental drawing, collage, or an unusual printing technique. And it was just such a session 'Kitchen Sink Lithography with Karen Carter’. Traditional lithography isn't the most accessible print making technique but one I'd always wanted to know more about. This session used tin foil and cola to create a printing plate based on lithography methods. This workshop coincided with the Annual Exhibition with its Henley-on-Thames theme. I'd already started preparing for a linocut based on the last steam locomotive (5038 "Morlais Castle") to leave Henley Station in 1963. I thought the image might be usable if tried with this new technique. So I played around and was quite pleased with the result.