Kurt Jackson’s new etching inspired by, and raising money for, our wonderful National Health Service is now available to order from our webshop.
Wildflowers for the NHS is a limited edition soft-ground and drypoint etching created by Jackson during lockdown. A handful of wildflowers – campion, stitchwort, celandine, daisy and primrose from the garden – hopeful proof of spring.
“I am writing this on a Thursday morning – a beautiful, sunny late Spring morning. This evening once again we will all troop outside our homes in our millions across the country to shout and clap, to show our thanks to the NHS.
Here in rural West Cornwall its quite extraordinary, standing on a hill in the dusk with the distant banging of pots and pans, the applause and musical instruments drifting across the parish, along the coast, all competing with the birds and livestock, it is quite beautiful.”
8pm Thursday evening
A thank you to the NHS
A rural chorus
Drums
The saucepan tattoo
Competes with the trill of a wren
And the faint sheep’s bleating calls
And the raucous jackdaws going to roost
In the valley sycamores
The ululations, the old horns
And applause
All drifts across the parish
Over the hedges
And fields
Along the coastal plain
A disparate choir
An orchestra of thanks
Sending their heartfelt praise
“It was during one of these sessions that I realised I could create something as a gift for the NHS, donating all the proceeds from an edition of a handmade print that people could keep and crucially in the process be also giving something themselves.
With the lockdown at the moment we are denied access to wander our outside world at will, curtailed from exploring and visiting except for our one spot of exercise a day. We can’t enjoy the big views, the panoramas but we can engage with the small things in life, For this glorious spring I have been working with the micro, the more intimate world around my home – the wild flowers, the insects, the home itself – these have been the recent inspiration for my creativity, the subjects for my art. Spring has produced an extraordinary floral few months and I chose to pick a handful of flowers from a hedge and make a small print of these blooms- white, glowing luminous against a dark background.
Campion, stitchwort, celandine, daisy, primrose. A sign of hope and renewal. And to say a big thank you to the fantastic hard work and love of the NHS staff.
After a week of messing around, trial and error and with Caroline’s involvement in the editioning we now have 50 drypoint and soft-ground etchings that I am delighted with.”
– Kurt Jackson, April 2020.
Wildflowers for the NHS is available from Kurt Jackson Editions.