In making this piece, I wanted to embrace my love of nature - but more than creating a purely figurative image, I also wanted to evoke a symbolic and atmospheric feel with the work.

I have cherished a fascination with Lepidoptera since childhood and this has become evident in my recent cyanotype work. The idea for this print began with tree silhouettes against the skies, which I took from one of my many photographs. I began playing with a mixture of negative and positive images. Most of my cyanotypes are made by changing my photograph to a negative image, which prints out as a positive in the cyanotype. However, I liked the ethereal effect of trees against a moody night sky which resulted from exposing a positive image. The “moon” is simply a circular portion of the sky which I made into a negative and layered it onto the main composition.

My choice of the Death’s Head Hawkmoth was for its connection to folklore and symbolism. Strikingly large, with a skull-like marking on its thorax and the ability to squeak when alarmed, the moth was traditionally seen as an omen of death. The idea of the moths flying upwards, towards the moon, resulted from some prints which were piled up on my table. The prints were made on a translucent paper and an interesting “layered” effect of images happened as they lay on top of each other, which I wanted to use in this piece. I incorporated the moth image into the main composition, duplicating, re-sizing and changing the position of it for each layer, to give the impression of multiple moths flying upwards and away towards the moon. All but the smallest moth (the one against the moon) are printed in negative format, which enhances the ghostly, ethereal mood of the piece.

Cyanotype-linocut combination