I fell in love with etching at a weekend course with Bron Bradshaw at the Dove Studios near Glastonbury in Somerset in 1999. I went back there the following year and also spent a week at the Porthmeor Workshops in St Ives with artist-printmaker Rachael Kantaris. I have been attending regular etching sessions at the Dove since 2000.

My prints are semi-abstract and they are developed from sketches made of landscapes in the South West of England and, more recently, the South West of France where I now live. The “Pays de Serres” area in the Midi-Pyrenées is well known for its distinctive undulating hillsides and oak woodlands and for its fields of vines, fruit, maize, millet and sunflowers. The shapes and colours these produce throughout the year are now a major inspiration for my work.

The etching process is incredibly absorbing. However, sometimes images get “stuck” somewhere between the plate and the print so I’m often fighting with elements of the printmaking process. How will the plate behave in the mordant? Will the marks be bold enough to produce the right depth of texture? Which colours should I use, and how will they work together in a print?

But I do get a tremendous buzz when a difficult ugly duckling of a plate turns into a glorious swan of a print.