Melanie Wickham

My work is mainly based on the natural world, but often with a humorous element.

My childhood was spent living on a smallholding in the Cotswolds and 4 generations of my family live in the Welsh hills. This over-exposure to nature and the elements has had a profound influence on me. I find it very difficult to make any art works which are not filled with animals.

I like to create images that make me smile - and hopefully viewers will do so too. The images are mainly black and white lino prints in limited editions and are hand printed using a boxwood burnishing tool on Somerset Satin paper. I enjoy pushing the limitations of lino printing as a technique, and creating an image with a 'drawn' feel to it is something I often aim for. The strong contracts that black and white provides can mean that the images are very striking and subtlety is not usually associated with lino prints. The quality of line produced using this technique is something that I particularly like and I feel it lends itself well to my images which are influenced by my training in illustration.