Cat Moore Printmaker
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Between High Walls

Linocut print in shades of blue showing the view between tall concrete walls towards the lookout tower of a WWII building

Between High Walls

When I pulled this print I was torn between two different colourways: blues and greys. So I have pulled an edition of both. I am endlessly fascinated by the way in which colour changes an image, sending the mood and tone off in a completely different direction, It’s one of the things I enjoy most about working in the multiblock technique.

Edition of 10 in two colourways

Hand pulled using oil based ink on Japanese Hosho paper

Linocut print in shades of blue showing the view between tall concrete walls towards the lookout tower of a WWII building
Linocut print in shades of grey showing the view between tall concrete walls towards the lookout tower of a WWII building

 Wandering through the concrete remnants of the watchtowers, searchlights, stores and gun emplacements left here in the aftermath of the Second World War is one of the few times where I’ve found it’s possible to feel enclosed. We live in such an open landscape, one a friend (via another friend) described to me recently as like walking on the surface of a map. It’s a strange thing: to step from wild open space to this, with the sounds of the sea shushed by hard concrete, and the sky reduced to the postage stamp of city dwelling. I love the drama of it, and the brutal shapes the concrete imposes, which feel eve more so perhaps because they are so alien to this landscape? Vernacular concrete is full of the evidence of place: shells and beach stones punctuate the grey substrate. But this? Imported, foreign and dominating, with no connection to the island, yet spectacular in its scale nevertheless.