Susan Wood

Hadrian’s Wall 2022 – I was ever hopeful, looking for the horde of gold, looking for traces of the past, for Roman treasure. I headed east from Walltown Crags to Cawfield Crags on a beautiful sunny July day. My given section was 43 – 44. Yes, there were traces. Delicate traces of fauna: strands of sheep’s wool, lumps of wool, clumps of wool. Perhaps the same sort of traces the Romans saw. And traces of flora: wild flowers growing in the grass – yarrow, cow parsnip, lady’s bedstraw, ragged robin, foxgloves. And actual traces left by the Roman stonemasons – chiselled blocks of stone neatly arranged in now depleted rows, marking the walls of the turrets between the Milecastles. And in a section of forest, traces of a storm. A huge upended fir tree near a fence. And there I found it – my very own treasure, my solid traces of the past. A large piece of heavy, rusty metal, that almost looked like a human form.

A head, shoulders, two arms and a hand. My imagination was racing away – a piece of Roman history? Probably not, but a pleasing shape. And then, slightly buried in the earth around the roots of the tree, two fragments of glass. The smaller piece was the bottom of a blue bottle, the larger was clear glass, but looking opaque and crackled with age. Serendipity plays a large part in my work. Like the Surrealists, I am intrigued by the element of chance, by not knowing in advance what may inspire me, and how this inspiration will translate into an image. I chose to make a linocut to represent the solid forms of the rusty metal and pieces of glass, the surviving vestiges of an earlier time, months, years, perhaps decades old. The flowers blowing in the wind and the even more delicate wisps of sheep’s wool were represented in a monoprint, superimposed on the linocut.

The project has inspired me to plan a series of my own, based on the stunning landscape around Hadrian’s Wall. Who knows what I may find, and what I will create. The horde of gold remains elusive, but the many, many traces of humans, flora and fauna will certainly offer inspiration aplenty.