Angela Harding, artist

0:00Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury, that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening.

0:45My cast away this week is the artist Angela Harding. In a digital age, her carefully crafted work is a breath of fresh air. She specialises in printmaking, handmade scenes featuring British wildlife created using a process that dates back a thousand years. One image can take weeks to complete. Her work, created in her home studio, has earned her fans around the world. It has graced the covers of best-selling books by former castaways, including Val McDermott, Isabella Tree, James Rebanks and the poet laureate Simon Armitage. You'll also find her on everything from notebooks to tea towels and her advent calendars have become a collector's item.

1:25She has five books of her own under her belt too, exploring her love of the British countryside. She discovered printmaking while she was a student of fine art in the early 1980s. Cutting into the lino used to create each image lent it power. As she puts it, it has a bit of violence to it. She says, it's interesting, especially in these days of AI, that publishers will still wait for me, sitting in a shed, in my garden, with my chisel. Angela Harding, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you, Lauren. Lovely to be here. It's great to have you. So, Angela, when I'm looking at one of your prints, I really feel the environment that you're depicting, whether it's the cold of the snow or, you know, the spray and the sound of the sea.

2:08When a piece is finished and you're looking at it for the first time, what do you see and feel? As the maker, you see the mistakes. But, you know, you start with an image in your mind, generally inspired from the place that I'm in. I like to go to the places that I'm commissioned to work about, whether that's Minchin Hampton Common or the Scottish Isles or down in Sussex on the Napa State. Actually being in the landscape is something that I try to convey in my work. But when I finish a piece, I really am starting to think about the next piece. That's generally what happens. Spoken like a true artist.

2:45On to the next thing, always. You might think of English wildlife as quite a sort of delicate subject matter, but actually there's a real power to your images and there's often this undercurrent of darkness in there. What's going on there? Well, I think nature is, you know, it's not a sentimental place. You know, a lot of the poets and writers that I admire, Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes, they highlight the rawness of the natural world and my work is used on book covers. And I think it's what gives it that little bit of edge, really, that it isn't just a sentimental portrayal of the world that surrounds us.

3:21You know, that everything basically is looking for lunch. Or it is going to be lunch. Or it's going to be lunch, you know. So that's the fight that's out there. And within that, you're trying to pick up on the beauty that's there as well. And aesthetically, you kind of have that juxtaposition is mirrored in the look of what you do, isn't it? because you have these kind of graphic black lines created by the printing process and then sort of soft wash of colour that you add. I find the images that become the work by working directly onto the lino. I mean, I do do drawings and have sketchbooks, but often the more powerful images that I do have been a sort of direct response to feeling something, seeing something and making it.

4:04And the stronger the feeling I have about something, the bigger the piece tends to be. There you have your limitations through process. And also that's part of what I think is why I became a printmaker is I like the almost housework. I don't like housework actually, I have to say, but the housework of printmaking is it imposes some rules on you. OK, so what do you mean by that? Well, when you paint, which I do paint as well, the options are so multiple. But when you print, you have a limited palette and you have a limited size to the press or the screen that you're using. And generally, if you're an illustrator or a commissioned illustrator, you've got limited time.

4:47So all those things are constraints that you have to work within. Also, as it's print, you're working in a mirror. So it's the reverse. Yes, you're working backwards. You've said that having dyslexia has been quite helpful to you in that regard. I think I found my place in the world through printmaking. I was officially doing a painting degree, but I found myself continually living in the print room and very comfortable with the images that I produced because it seemed to turn everything the right way round. So tell me a little bit, Angela, about this idea of violence in creating your art and the appeal of that.

5:24What exactly do you mean? I think it stems from, again, if you go back to art school days, that drawing was very implicit in what I was doing but most of my drawing came from dead things that I found and it's like a traditional way of learning your craft really and in those days I was living away from the college in Melton Mowbray and would cycle into college and collect roadkill on the way in and tie it to the handlebars and that became very much my subject matter as well as when I got back home I was living in a little cottage I would just boil up the heads and have a display of skulls that I would draw Did you pre-worn visitors when they came in?

6:07I was an art student. Everyone was up for schools. I get it. And what about when you work your studio in Rutland? I've seen a photograph and it looks out onto countryside. It looks so tranquil and beautiful. It is. Do you like to work in peace and quiet or do you ever listen to music? Music is very important to the way I work and you were describing a sense of violence but hopefully there's a sense of movement in what I do. and when I start a new piece, if it's not for a commission for a book or it's a piece that's a personal piece of work, I will actually lay out the lino, put on some music and the lino's already prepared and it's sort of inked black and then I'll use chalk and start to build up the rhythm of the piece by the music and the drawing.

6:52All right, well let's dive into your music today, your first choice today, Angela Harding. What's it going to be and why have you chosen to take it with you? You can't listen to Angie Stone and not start dancing. And this one in particular, I want to thank you, reminds me of so many things. And the love I have for my family and my husband and just makes me want to move and hopefully makes them want to move too.

7:46I want to thank you. Angie Stone featuring Snoop Dogg. So let's go back to the beginning then, Angela. You were born in Stoke-on-Trent in 1960, the middle child of three daughters to Stephen and Joan. I believe your parents met at an evening class. What was it? My mum and dad met at a sculpture class. They both loved art. My mum was sculpting a head and my dad used to carry a head home for her every evening. So that's how they met. Tell me a bit more about your dad, Stephen. What did he do for a living? Well, my father was a sort of major influence on me and still is, even though he's not with us anymore.

8:22And my father was from an upper-middle-class family, really, in Stoke-on-Trent and they were integral to the potteries industry. His family made specific tools that were used in the pottery industry. With mechanisation those tools became redundant so my grandfather who I never met had to sort of change the nature of the business. So my father actually broke out the mould of being part of this small family business to go to Cambridge. So he was the first one of the family to go to university. What did he study? He studied English when Professor Leavis was there. He had a wonderful time. This was in the late 40s, 1940s, and always talked fondly of it and provided me with that love of poetry and educated me long after I'd done very badly at school.

9:19I got to know Dad, really. He went more in my 20s, really. So you became closer when you were adults. Yeah, when we were adults. What did he do with his degree? What did he do for a job? Well, he actually wanted to stay on, but the family said no, that he had to go and get a job. And he worked for the British Council. He was in Izmir working in Turkey. And one of his famous stories was that he was a very young, quite nervous man. And he'd had an accident during the war, which is why he wasn't in the services. He had really shaky hands. By a sort of series of circumstances, He'd only just arrived in Turkey.

9:56He found himself representing Britain on Bastille Day at the French Embassy and was quite nervous about it. And there he was meeting the ambassador, the ambassador's wife and all the dignitaries. and they were served with a variety of cakes to which my father says he doesn't know why he did it but he went for the meringue with cream and with his shaky hands and his nervousness the tension mounted on this meringue until he was opposite the ambassador's wife who had had an ample chest on display and there was a minor explosion

10:35which he didn't know it's to wipe or run. But sadly, while my dad was working for the British Council, my grandfather had an accident. In those days, there weren't many cars around, but he was quite wild, my grandfather, apparently. But he managed to have a car accident. My father had to come back and help with the business. Your dad sometimes appears in your work, doesn't he? He does, yes. He was a great walker and a great whippet owner. And particularly in my early illustrations, and still to this date, If there's a little man with a stick and a whippet, it's generally my father. We walk many miles together.

11:11And he got to see your work. He got to see himself in your work. What did he think of that? He did. He didn't get to see me working with the Poet Laureate, which he would have loved, but he did get to see me working with Faber and Faber doing book covers. The first book cover I did for them was John Keats, and I was able to give him a copy of that, and that was very special. Let's have some more music, Angela. It's your second choice today. What have you gone for and why? Well, this is Ted Hughes reading The Thought Fox and I have my dad to thank, as I say, to a long introduction of many poets.

11:45But this one in particular is poignant because not only has my dad had a great love of Ted Hughes, as I do, but I actually got to illustrate the cover of The Thought Fox so it feels apt to have this in his beautiful voice. The Thought Fox I imagine this midnight moment, Forrest. Something else is alive, beside the clock's loneliness, and this blank page where my fingers move. Through the window I see no star, something more near, though deeper within darkness is entering the loneliness. Cold, delicately as the dark snow, a fox's nose touches twig, leaf. Two eyes serve a movement That now and again now and now and now Sets neat prints into the snow between trees And warily a lame shadow lags by stump and in hollow Of a body that is bold to come across clearings An eye, a widening, deepening greenness Brilliantly, concentratedly coming about its own business Till with a sudden sharp, hot stink of fox It enters the dark hole of the head The window is starless still The clock ticks The page is printed Ted Hughes reading his poem The Thought Fox So we've heard Angela about your dad and his love of poetry Yes What about your mum, Joan?

13:13So she studied art, was she able to pursue that as a career? Well my mum was unusual because she came from a very working class family There's five of them in a tiny terraced house behind the Mitchelam factory in Stoke So she really did reach high ambition by getting to go to art college. And she studied sculpture in the 1950s and actually applied for a job to work in as a stonemason in a church. She applied by letter and signed the letter J Wood and sent her samples of her drawings and was lucky to get that job. But when she turned up, they're expecting John Wood, not Joan Wood. So, yeah, she did that for a while before we were born.

13:56And then she went into teaching and actually went into ceramics. She did ceramics for all of her life. Do you have any of her work? She was never known for her delicate touch. They were all quite hefty. And at her funeral, we heaved some into the wake afterwards. And people, if they could pick them up and take them, they could take them with them. And so I have one in the bathroom, but I don't have much, actually. So growing up, you always loved wildlife, Angela, and apparently you had a little orange case full of bird's feathers that you collected. I did, yes. The bird case was stuffed with a variety of feathers you would get from the butcher.

14:35I was friends with Janet Hodgkin, who was a butcher's daughter and gave me pheasant feathers and duck feathers you'd get then. but also I just love finding them in the garden or out on woods and this sort of jewel-like quality of a jay's bath, winged feather just the pigeon feathers are beautiful, you know Were you drawing them yet? I was drawing but not very well My elder sister Sarah could draw like a young prodigy she always had that ability to so I was obviously in her shadow and my younger sister is very good at drawing too So we all, you know, we all had this artistic bent. And my mother, as I stated, come from a working class background and married my father, seeing it as a moving up the social ladder, really, and didn't want her daughter slipping back from that social ladder.

15:29And so she didn't want us to go to art school. So we all went. But she'd gone then. So, you know, by that time, it was us making our own decisions. That's interesting though, isn't it, for the girl who had her head carried over? Yeah, no, and she remained artistic all her life. She was from a certain era and I think she just saw us, me in particular, I was supposed to be a nurse and marry a doctor and my sisters, as she saw, who were cleverer than me, they would have been the doctors. Oh, wow, OK, so she was pretty clear about where she was. She was quite prejudiced, really, quite bullying, so it was a bit of relief when we were left to our own devices with Dad.

16:09You mentioned being dyslexic earlier, Angela. How did that affect you at school? Did it hold you back in your studies? I didn't really do much at school. It was in the days when dyslexia wasn't really recognised. I've never been formally diagnosed, but I think I have an unusual way of viewing the world. So however that is, I'm a slow reader, but I love books. So I've just learned to read at my own pace, really. So what was the school's response to you struggling in that way? They just ignored you, really. You just ended up in the naughty group, which fitted me fine, really. Reid did it. Yeah, and when I got to, I couldn't get hardly any O-levels.

16:51I'd got enough, you know, to scrape through. But then when I got to, my mum wanted me to do this pre-nursing course. This is just before she left. So I did sign on to do that. but I spent the day getting there on the bus and then the rest of the day walking home, you know, so I didn't really attend much. And what about the naughty group and fitting in there? What kind of thing did you get up to? Sitting next to me was Anthea Turner, actually. We were in the same class. You were both in the naughty group? Yeah, we were both in the naughty group and we both did all right in the end. Yeah, she had the desk next to me.

17:23We went to a Catholic convent school. The best teachers were given to the more academic girls And so we got quite a few rejected nuns who were nice, interesting characters, swore a lot for, you know, teachers, one of them in particular. So swearing nuns. Swearing nuns. The downside was I can only be naughty to a certain level because my mother taught there. I was in her class for some things, some lessons when we were doing craft. But then because she was there, she wouldn't let me do art. That was one of the downsides. I had to do domestic science, which I failed abysmally, and I hate cooking with a passion to this day.

18:07Angela, let's go to the music. I want to hear your next piece. What have you chosen to take to the island next? Well, a reflection of my love of birds. This is Benjamin Britton, whose music I love in many different pieces he does, and he represents Suffolk and the beauty of the reed beds around there. but this one in particular is about the cuckoo and the cuckoo is a marvellous bird because it's mysterious and actually the village where I live is called Wing, ironically and there's a myth that's not just for Wing because other villages have it too that to keep spring, the people of Wing captured a cuckoo and kept it to stop winter coming and they were known as the Wing Fools so I undoubtedly am one of those Wing Fools.

18:56What do you do?

19:01In April I open my bill In May I sing night and day In June I change my tune In July far far I fly In August away

19:30I must

19:40Cuckoo, from Benjamin Britten's Songs from Friday Afternoons, sung by the choir of Downside School, Pearlie with Viola Tonnard on the piano and Benjamin Britten conducting. So, Angela Harding, you mentioned your mum leaving, Your parents divorced when you were in your teens. What impact did that have on you? Well, it's sort of, we'd gone from this very conventional, aspiring, middle-class family, Catholic. The Catholicism was very important. Going to church on a Sunday and all the feast days in between. You know, there's a lot of time spent at church to all of a sudden the whole thing sort of imploding.

20:19And I think that's sort of partly why we all ended up at art school as well. You know, it was like we were all a bit lost, I think, really. But at the time, I would have been 15, 16. And I officially went with my mum as we didn't have a house to go to. So me and my little sister were with my granddad sharing a bed, not just a room, a bed with bullets down the middle to stop us fighting. And my elder sister was with my dad and my other grandmothers. But eventually everything obviously got sorted out. and it became apparent that my little sister, even though she was very little at the time, she had only been 10, 11, wasn't going to stay with my mother and went to live with my father who hadn't been awarded the finances from the breakup.

21:08So my mum got the money, as it did happen in those days, the judge thinking to provide for the children, but she got the money but she didn't take the children really. There is an assumption that children will stay close to their mum and obviously you can hear you just adored your dad and the way that you're talking about him and your relationship with your mum sounds more complex. Yes. How did you feel and how did you deal with living with your dad and being supported by a single dad? Because it's unusual now, it must have been more unusual. It was very unusual. I suppose I give thanks to my boyfriends at the time's families who took you in and I became part of their families really.

21:45And so my mum got offered a job in Yorkshire and she left And I think she, you know, we weren't tiny babies, but we were a long way off grown up. But I don't think she could see a way of being part of our lives. It was easier to go away and start again. And she did have somebody she was hoping, I think, to form a relationship with, but it never worked out. So neither my mum or my dad ever met anybody. They lived all their lives on their own. And were you able to maintain contact with her? I would see her probably once a year, which was always fraught. So no, not really. She was a harsh person to do that because I can't imagine doing that to my children.

22:28She had great energy and I thank her for that. Hopefully I have that too. And so you made it to art college, studied for a fine art degree at Leicester Polytechnic. Yeah, I did. Did you enjoy your time there? I did. I think that's when I started to really find my feet. You got a first, Angela. Yeah. For someone who struggled at school and had been told that, you know, they didn't have the potential to do what you wanted to do. That must have been so rewarding. It was, yes. My father, Blottom, he came to see the degree show and took me out for a knicker block of glory to celebrate. And my mum, I told by telephone and she said, first, are you sure?

23:09But, you know, she just couldn't quite believe it. But I did sell work and I sold enough work from that show to fund my first solo trip across Europe. I got on what's called the Magic Bus, which is three days nonstop from London, Victoria to Athens with one or two adventures on the way. Yeah, it was that first finding your love of travel, really. And, you know, I had this sort of urge to travel independently and meet people. Angela it's time to go to the music tell us about your next disc well this sort of wild time I would say long before children and responsibilities and the gathering of people at my dad's cottage because my dad wasn't there he bought the house but it was just a load of art students so to celebrate this we've got public image rise I could be wrong I could be right

24:09I could be wrong I could be wrong, I could be right I could be black, I could be white I could be right, I could be wrong I could be white, I could be black Your time has come, your second skin Public Image Ltd and Rise So Angela, after your degree, you spent some time travelling. You were doing voluntary service overseas in Bangladesh. What motivated you to do that? Was it the work itself or were you out for an adventure? I think if I'm honest, I was out for an adventure and I think I took more than I gave, I think, with the BSO. I worked in a rehab centre for paralysed people. You arrived and you did three months at language school, so I was my pigeon Bengali, he was still there, Slightly.

25:05And then in the afternoons in those three months, you got to know the people in the project. And my department was a tin shed, which was the OT department. And we were setting up bridges between the commercial world and the hospital world. And my role really was to try and improve those designs they were doing. We had one tin shed as a carpentry department and the other tin shed was my craft OT department. and the other part of my job was to visit people who'd been released to go back into the community because the alternative was begging so and some people made that choice but we were trying to provide income and one of these products was teddy bears and my I think it was virtually my first week of working solo I was visiting an ex-patient who is now rehabilitated back to her home and so I went to visit her in this tiny camp and collecting the teddy bears these were very important source of income for this lady and so I gathered up the teddy bears ready to take to get a good price and establish the market that would then go forward for her in the future and I got into the rickshaw with the sample bears beautifully packaged and said to the rickshaw driver in my Pigeon Bengali, please take me to whatever address it was.

26:30It's obviously a long time ago since I was there. They have an open sewer system and the people just go to the toilet in the street and there's areas where the poo gathers into like a large pit and on this particular day there was quite a sort of crust formed which I hadn't noticed that as I got out of the rickshaw I thought what was solid ground wasn't solid ground and I fell into an open sewer up to my waist but all I could think about was these teddy bears which I held in my arms above my head and kindly people pulled me out of the sewer and my flip-flops floated to the top.

27:17And then I looked at the rickshaw driver and said, my pigeon Bengali, can you take me back? to have a good shower. And the teddy bears were all right and all was well. Thank goodness. You headed back to Britain eventually, Angela, and you became the artist in residence at Uppingham School. Yes. And it was there that you met your first husband, Tim. Now, the two of you started a family, but I'm sorry to say that your first daughter, Lydia, was born very prematurely. She was, yes. You lost her. She couldn't be saved. Yes. I think nowadays might be different, but she was not further enough along to be classed as a stillborn but that's what it felt like to me, the little baby girl that we had.

28:01It must have been a devastating experience to go through. It was, it was and I feel for every woman who's had to go through that and every father of course and it was difficult for Tim as well. And pregnancy was not an easy route for me. After that I fell pregnant again and ended up in hospital again and it was very touch and go whether I kept Holly, my daughter, and I remember seeing the scan with all the blood clots around her and feeling so, so responsible. You know, you had Holly and then you had your son, George. George as well. Were you supported? Were you able to talk about the difficulties that you had in having your family with people?