Lucy Ward Prints

Looking down at seals sheltering on a calm beach, safe from the churning waves and the wind lashing the grass on the headland. Everyone needs a place of calm to recharge before they go back into the world, whether that’s a physical place, being around certain people or a favourite activity.

This etching is part of a new exploration that has come out of my time at the Mawddach residency, combining quickly drawn hard ground etching that evokes the immediacy of my sketches with the considered aquatint process.

This is a varied edition because the sparkles on the sea are different each time I print the plate.

The trees around Mawddach in Wales, where I was on residency in September 2024, are fantastic. They are twisted, hardy, resilient - they remain through storms, snow and sunshine, and grow into permanently windswept shapes on the hills. They are shaped by the environment and all the more beautiful for it because there is a strength and endurance there.

Monoprint made on location at the Mawddach residency in September 2025.

Monoprint made on location during my Mawddach residency in September 2024.

Monoprint made on location during my Mawddach residency in September 2024.

This drypoint was made during my Mawddach residency in September 2024. The hawthorn trees on the hills were windswept into fantastic shapes, their trunks twisted and the roots hanging on between rocks. They adapted to the environment, however harsh that environment might be.

When the winter seems to go on forever, the first hints of colour are the crocuses coming up. That colour is so bright and shocking and optimistic it can feel like a shift in the world after so many long nights. The plants themselves are tiny, and seem so fragile, but they are tough enough to weather the snow.

Etching and monoprint

Varied edition of 20

© Lucy Ward

Print size: 16.2cm x 12.3cm

Paper size: 29cm x 24cm approx

Bluebells have a lot of fascinating folklore attached to them. They symbolise gratitude and everlasting love in the language of flowers, but you might fall under enchantment if you stray too far into the woods. Fairies in folklore aren’t the cute kind, and they don’t like clumsy humans traipsing into their meeting places. Stories tell of people being spelled so they walk in circles, never finding their way out unless someone comes to rescue them.

This has a real-world echo, as unfortunately not everyone feels safe to go into the woods and enjoy nature on their own, something that is so positive for us to do. And if we do visit, we should be aware that we are guests in a delicate ecosystem.

Wild bluebells are protected by law and are an indicator of ancient woodland. Please don’t step on them - they are fragile and it breaks that blue carpet into clumps over time.

Nature is so amazing, and a bluebell wood has a special kind of atmosphere.

This drypoint print is part of a series inspired by my night-time walks around Blackheath during lockdown.

This one is looking towards Greenwich Park, with Canary Wharf in the background.

This print is entirely drypoint, made on a copper plate and printed in a mix of black and blue, apart from the dots of red, which were added to the print in gouache.

This drypoint print is part of a series inspired by my night-time walks around Blackheath during lockdown.

This one was inspired by a scene towards the end of my walk, when it was starting to get fully dark and it became harder to distinguish the edges of things. The reflections of light on the pond make the dark water visible.

This print is entirely drypoint, made on a copper plate and printed in a mix of black and blue, apart from the dots of red, which were added to the print in gouache.

This drypoint print is part of a series inspired by my night-time walks around Blackheath during lockdown.

This print is entirely drypoint, made on a copper plate and printed in a mix of black and blue, apart from the dots of red, which were added to the print in gouache.

This drypoint print is part of a series inspired by my night-time walks around Blackheath during lockdown. I’d been thinking about making some night-time prints for a while, and then in Spring 2020, when we went into lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, night-time walks became my only experience outside my home for several months.

It was quiet after dark, and I enjoyed the peace and cool night air as I explored different routes around the heath, stepping between pools of light and shadows from the streetlights. It was a brief daily respite from the worries and strains of the pandemic. The traffic, which is normally always busy around Blackheath, slowed to a trickle as people stayed home, and the heath became a surreal place of half-seen silhouettes of other walkers and scavenging foxes.

This print is entirely drypoint, made on a copper plate and printed in a mix of black and blue, apart from the dots of red, which were added to the print in gouache.

This collagraph is inspired by dreams of Scottish forests. There’s a technique you can use if you can’t get to sleep where you imagine yourself floating over a landscape, whether it’s a real or fictional one, and this print of imagined moonlit woods came out of that.

This print was inspired by spending time at Cannon Beach in Oregon a few years ago. Haystack Rock is a local landmark, tourist attraction and home to birds (as well as featuring in the film, The Goonies).

I tried to capture the last light as the sun set over the misty beach, which made me think about different scales of time. The light changing every second as the sun slips down, the generations of bird colonies and human visitors, and the long erosion of basalt rock from the coastline - the parallel time scales converge in this scene. What will it look like in ten, fifty, a hundred, a thousand years? And who might be looking at it?

Aquatint

© Lucy Ward

Edition of 25

Print size: 16.2cm x 12.3cm

Paper size: 29cm x 24cm approx

This was inspired by an early morning walk in the RSPB Loch Garten nature reserve in Abernethy, Scotland, near the Cairngorms. We were guided by one of the RSPB rangers and because it was right at the end of their centre's season, there was hardly anyone else in the reserve. The forest is a special place, like something out of a dream. It’s peaceful, yet filled with the sounds and movement of birds and animals, the creak of branches and the lapping of water. The old Scots pines and undulating carpet of blaeberry and mosses make it feel magical, as if anything could happen, but the creatures that live there also make you feel grounded in reality as they forage and call, attending to their practical needs. The air is very clean and cool and smells of pine.

I wanted to make a print that brings together the feel of that place, both surreal and solid, and the sight of the loch and the waterfowl through the trees. I worked on a copper plate with a drypoint tool, sandpaper, a wire brush and files to build up a texture evoking its physical and ethereal nature, going over the darkest areas many times with tiny scratches to create rich tones. There are some birds hidden in the trees, calling back to my experience of scanning the branches for crested tits, a bird that only lives in this area in the UK, which we heard more than we saw but thanks to our guide, we finally got to watch a flock of them.

Although I often make landscape prints, I don’t usually name them after the locations I’ve based them on because they are usually normally about searching for a place that fits the atmosphere or feeling of what I want to make rather than the place itself, and can sometimes take elements from several places as well as my imagination. But when I came to name this print, it could only be called Loch Garten, because it’s about this special place and nowhere else.

This drypoint print was inspired by walks in Scotland.

Aquatint

© Lucy Ward

Edition of 30

Drypoint and monoprint

Edition of 10, EV

© Lucy Ward

This print was made for the Greenwich Printmakers’ 40th anniversary exhibition at the Watts Contemporary Gallery, which will open on July 4, 2019. We were asked to make new work in response to the gallery, its collection of work by G F Watts and others, or its surroundings.

The Watts Chapel was designed by Mary Watts and is a beautiful Grade 1-listed Arts and Crafts building. Working with people from the local community, she created a building that is beautiful on the outside, with its red bricks and intricate decorations, but just as stunning on the inside. Walking into the tiny chapel for the first time is a special experience and feels like entering a secret world, full of colour and symbolism, with angels and the tree of life arching overhead.

In this print, I brought in the trees from outside to echo the nature-inspired patterns, just hinting at the jewel-like colours and decoration inside, leaving it a mystery to be discovered. The door shows it is a place that is open so anyone can enjoy its amazing interior, following the ethos of Mary Watts, who believed in art for all.

Drypoint and monoprint

© Lucy Ward

Edition of 10, EV

This print was made for the Greenwich Printmakers’ 40th anniversary exhibition at the Watts Contemporary Gallery, which opens on July 4, 2019. We were asked to create work in response to the Watts gallery, its collections or its surroundings.

When I was deciding what to make for the exhibition, I stopped for a coffee in the gallery’s café and ended up sitting in a room filled with pieces made by participants in the Artists’ Village’s work with the local community, based on its ethos that art should be for everyone and a creative passion can transform people’s lives. I was really struck by the image of brightly decorated lanterns hanging near the window, with the branches of a tree stretching out behind it. The lanterns had been turned into planets by a group from the halow project, a local charity that supports young people with learning disabilities.

Seeing the juxtaposition of the lanterns and the natural world outside, which I believe can also have a positive effect on people’s wellbeing, I felt really moved and decided to make a print inspired by it.

Aquatint

© Lucy Ward

Edition of 20

Etching and aquatint

© Lucy Ward

Edition of 25

Aquatint

© Lucy Ward

Edition of 30

Aquatint

© Lucy Ward

Edition of 25

Towards the Forest was selected for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2018.

Etching and aquatint

© Lucy Ward

Edition of 30

Read about the making of this print on my blog here.

Aquatint

© Lucy Ward

Linocut

© Lucy Ward

Edition of 10

Reduction linocut

© Lucy Ward

1/1

A specially commissioned, one-off print of Ghar Lapsi, a popular swimming spot in Malta.

Aquatint

© Lucy Ward

Etching and aquatint

© Lucy Ward

Edition of 15

This was inspired by an encounter with a kestrel in a Welsh national park. She watched me, unafraid, as I walked up a path that passed right by the rock she was sitting on. We looked at one another for several minutes, just a few metres apart. Then I walked on, hoping I hadn't disturbed her too much. When I looked back, she was staring into the distance, to where I had come from, and I wondered whether she was waiting for the next strange creature that might appear up the path.

Woodcut

© Lucy Ward

A woodcut printed for handmade Christmas cards.