Angela Harding

The artist behind some of today’s best-loved prints and book illustrations talks to REBECCA BRADBURY about the delights of the British countryside and dividing her time between two studios

- REBECCA BRADBURY

No adventure seems quite as romantic as voyaging around the British Isles on board a vintage sailing boat. From the wild sand dunes and windswept marshes of Suffolk to the towering sea stacks and wildlife-rich waters of the Shetlands to the hidden coves, precipitous clifftops and sparkling beaches of Cornwall, the UK’s varied shores are a ceaseless source of inspiration for a landscape painter.

Perhaps the only way to trump this vision for many artists would be to have a loved one at the helm and a sketchbook to hand. And for printmaker and illustrator Angela Harding this fantasy is very much a reality, as she spends most of her summers at sea with her husband, Mark, capturing the wonders of the country’s charming coastline. “I live about as far from the sea as you can be,” explains the Rutland-based artist, “but we have a little wooden boat we keep on the Suffolk coast, and we spend quite a bit of the summer on that. That’s the watery element that inspires my work.”

“You always see nature very closely when you’re on the water with it,” she adds. “It gives you time as well. When I’m on the boat I can really concentrate on drawing and thinking about the images that I want to create.”

Yet with a studio overlooking a field of grazing sheep at the bottom of her garden, slap bang in the middle of the East Midlands countryside, Angela’s more permanent surrounds still feed into her art – and it is these scenes that have remained at the heart of her output.