Making of Silver Darlings

​The journey of Silver Darlings began not as a defined concept, but as a natural evolution from my earlier work, woodcuts created in response to the “Grind” in the Faroe Islands. These initial blocks held emotional weight:

• Block A was an abstraction of whales.
• Block B showed both the living (marked with circles) and the carved-out absence of the dead.

At some point, though I’m not entirely sure when, the focus shifted from whales to herring, or what are known in the North as silver darlings. I think this change came after printing my small picture book Dance to Your Daddy, based on the lullaby and inspired by my great grandad, a Shetland fisherman, and conversations with my aunt.
Accidental Beauty: Ink, Paper, and Water
While printing one of the wood blocks, I accidentally misaligned the paper. When I repositioned it, the overlap produced a double image that immediately reminded me of moving water and Langmuir Cells. Rather than discard it, I leaned into the accident. I experimented with sea-inspired colours: printing in blue, then green, and later swapping their order to better capture the feeling of the ocean.
I eventually carved a dedicated herring wood block, along with a large block that used the wood grain to mimic moving water. One day, a droplet of water fell from my bracelet onto a print. I watched as the ink dispersed outward, and it gave me an idea: I soaked rice paper under running water, then pressed it onto the inked block. The wet areas blurred, while the dry areas stayed crisp, each print unique. These became the base of the sail.
The Spark: A Saree, a Sail, and an idea
Scrolling through a reel, I saw saree printers flicking fabric in preparation to handprint. It looked like a boat sail catching wind, and suddenly I thought: what if I printed on a real sail? It tied perfectly into the story of the Silver Darlings.
Through a generous donation, I received a racing yacht sail. Some of the smaller prints worked well through the press, but the sail’s structure, its ropes and grommets, meant the larger sections needed to be hand-printed. Screen printing was suggested, but that opened new challenges. Colours that looked bold in the tub appeared too pale on fabric. The process was physically demanding, draining more "pixie dust" than I had.
As the exhibition deadline loomed, I made the difficult but necessary choice to recreate the sail in paper, using the actual sail as a template.
Rice Paper, Shetland Lace, and Breaking Points
Inspired by my gran’s Shetland lace and the delicacy of rice paper, I began cutting into the blank areas of the prints. I was utterly exhausted, creatively stuck and aimlessly working, so I threw all the scraps into a pile on the sofa. But when I returned, I saw something new in the chaos. That mess became the blueprint, and I began building the paper sail, cut by cut, print by print.
Disney Magic and Deep-Sea Colours
A long-time admirer of Disney’s visual storytelling, I borrowed their trick of using gradients, from dark to light, to create a sense of depth and height. I used this to mimic a journey from the deep sea to the ocean surface, blending tones inspired by the Atlantic. I even mixed my own black ink to ensure it faded just the right way.
Reflection
Silver Darlings marks a turning point in my practice. It pushed me toward a more abstract approach and changed how I think about materials, accidents, and storytelling through process. More than an artwork, it's a prototype, a first step toward a future project that’s slowly taking shape.
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