Rachel Gracey, 'River Notes,' at the Zuleika Gallery, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, from 3 September 2022.

Rachel Gracey takes the title for her latest exhibition from what she calls ‘a quite extraordinary, quirky book’ that was first published in 1979, and which she happened upon quite by chance. River Notes: The Dance of Herons, by the American author Barry Lopez, lyrically charts the inner life of a nameless narrator, and his thoughts and feelings in an unnamed landscape – looking, watching, dreaming – alert to all the sensations of Nature. Gracey was particularly captured by one of the final lines, when, with winter approaching, a dried-out watercourse returns after a long summer drought. ‘The river has come back to fit between its banks,’ Lopez’s narrator observes. ‘To stick your hands into the river is to feel the cords that bind the earth together in one piece.’ 

Lopez’s word ‘cords’ echoes with its musical homophone, ‘chords,’ and the ‘notes’ of his title are not simply the record of his words, but also his appreciation of nature’s sounds. The book’s whole approach to being with and in the natural world resonated with Gracey, who also has a deep appreciation of music. ‘This is what I am really doing,’ she realized as she read. ‘I’m observing what’s going on ... I’m involved in watching landscape, watching nature.’ 

The first set in her quartet of prints was inspired by the River Thames at Port Meadow. This large, open area of flood plain on the western edge of Oxford has for centuries been an area of common land, open to everyone. During the isolation of lockdown in 2020 it also became a popular location for escape from confinement. Gracey saw how important water suddenly was for so many people – as a place of sanctuary, release, freedom. Reflecting the changing moods of that difficult year, these smaller images (necessitated by her inability at the time to source the larger zinc plates she usually works from) are often liberating and celebratory. A few are also sad, sullen, dark. 

The second set, inspired by the River Helford in Cornwall, reflects a very different sort of river, one that is dramatic and powerful. They sing with a different, wilder sort of rhythm. The Cherwell, the river closest to her home in North Oxford, and its neighbouring ponds, inspired the gentler third set. The Cherwell has many busy stretches – especially in summer, when it is the haunt of walkers, anglers, bathers, canoeists and punters. But it can quickly quieten. When it does, one can sometimes spot a kingfisher, an egret, cormorants, a heron, or wagtails. These ornithological elements are in the images she creates, the colours and the shapes bringing out perhaps the fluttering of birds, or their song. 

Poised on the riverbank, carefully observing, Gracey makes records on paper in ink and pencil and watercolour, producing endless drawings for each set of prints in her series. Having collected her information, her sketches are taken back to the studio, where they eventually became the inspiration for her finished works. 

What is most striking in them is Gracey’s powerful and assured use of colour. ‘Nature does have such vibrancy,’ she explains. ‘Sometimes you wouldn’t believe it – sometimes it’s only there in the leaf, but I think, “Let’s actually make it the whole thing!”’ She is very keen to push the boundaries of printmaking, and sculpture has been a particular influence. One of her favourite artists is the American sculptor Alexander Calder (1898–1976). Best known for the metal mobiles he started making in the early 1930s, Calder brought colour and movement to what until then had been a very static, frequently monochrome medium. 

Gracey perceives how movement is happening all the time, even in the stillest English landscape. With her most recent prints she has aimed to capture something of this shifting three-dimensionality. Her aim in every work is to capture something of the motion and the depth in a single moment – to capture what she calls ‘one essence of a place.’ Made during the spring, summer and autumn 2021, the Cherwell series have an extraordinary vibrancy and joy to them. ‘With these,’ she says, ‘I think the river has been so full of surprises ... They are much stronger than I thought they were going to be.’ 

The final set, based upon a brief visit to the River Stour in Dorset earlier this year, is the most deeply personal. Gracey has bound some into a little book she titles ‘Rubato Flow.’ A musical term, rubato refers to a composer’s permission to free the performer, allowing them to express their own interpretation, making its rhythm their own. Using just black and white on coloured paper, they are a meditation on the recent death of her father, conveying how, even in the latter stages of his life, he expressed a joy and freedom in living – a desire always to seize life. Though sad and poignant, this final set is, nonetheless, meditative and beautiful. 

Fittingly, here Gracey quotes melodic lines from Maya Angelou’s poem, On the Pulse of Morning: ‘A river sings a beautiful song. It says / Come, rest here by my side.’