On a Leitrim beach, what looks like little more than brown sludge is clinging to the tide line; but to illustrator and artist Christine Harrison, it’s a miniature world of colour and natural beauty.
After ten years in London, Christine moved to Leitrim, a place not unlike her native Buckinghamshire, where she grew up wandering through the woods and forming a fascination with nature.
“I was an only child, and I could kind of get lost in nature, and it would feel really magical to me,” she says.
Describing herself as “just a general creative”, Christine says nature has always been a “through line” in her work, but it was only after moving to the North-West that her now-signature seaweed pressings began to take shape.
It was while in London that she first came into contact with seaweed pressing on old cards taken from archives.
“It always stuck with me to see a piece of seaweed like that,” she says.
Christine finished a master’s in Children’s Book Design in London before moving to Ireland, where she began making presses with seaweed she found on walks on beaches in Donegal, Sligo, and along Leitrim’s coastline with her Collie dog, Mason.
What might appear at first glance as “brown sludge” washed up along the shore reveals itself on closer inspection as something with a lot of artistic potential.
The process is similar to flower pressing: seaweed is collected, rinsed and carefully arranged on paper underwater before being laid out to dry, a method that can take a lot of care over a few weeks.
“I just really love the translucence of when they’re set on the paper,” she says. “It really shows off their colours. I get a lot of people coming up and being like, ‘Oh, wow, I didn’t know that seaweed could be that colour.’ People get really fascinated by them.”
The sea is something Christine feels artistically drawn to again and again; even her logo – a sea serpent – is an image that seems to always recur in her mind. It’s been this way since she was a child when her parents gifted her a figurine they picked up on a trip to Ireland.
So when she was stuck for a logo, naturally, this came to her.
“I just sketched that out, and it just made sense really quickly,” she says.
But she stresses that all nature in the area is inspirational, and she follows her nose, meandering between landscapes and mediums and creating art through illustration, prints, and photography.
“I could take a lot of close-up pictures of moss and lichens,” she says. “It’s just little microcosmic worlds I find really interesting, and getting really up close to places that you’d kind of walk by, and you wouldn’t notice.
“My landlord was wanting to spray pesticides, and I had to go and talk to him because I’ll go down looking at the moss there.
“So yeah, you can just find it in your garden or in a hedge. It doesn’t have to go traipsing into the wilds to find pretty magical species and little worlds.”
Christine has been making and selling her seaweed prints at fairs around the country for the last two years and took part in Gifted – a major craft and design fair in Dublin – last year.
“I get quite attached because you sort of work on a piece over a while,” says Christine, thinking particularly about some of the larger works. “It was kind of sad to see them go because it’s kind of like a living artwork in a way because they were alive at one point.”
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The foray into the world of seaweed pressing has brought her to study the different species that she finds along the North-West coast.
“It’s been like a real education that just sort of grew out of an interest,” she says. “I’ve contacted the university in Galway because when I was still learning, and I still am learning, there’s so many different species [and] I wanted to make sure that I’d identified them all right before selling them.”
Each of Christine’s art pieces is based on a unique piece of seaweed she has found. Although she’s not the only artist in the country pursuing this kind of seaweed art, there aren’t many others. This medium has become her focus over the last year, though she is still trying to find space for her other artistic pursuits.
However, she admits it has spilled over into her other works.
“I really want to get back to my sketchbook because I got a bit neglected last year, which is fine, you just have different seasons for things,” she says. “I would love to get back to doing more illustrative work as well.
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“It’s almost frustrating and overwhelming. I want to split myself into ten different artists because there’s different mediums I want to try.”
While the artistic side comes naturally to Christine, who also works in a gallery in Donegal, the business side of her art is something that she has been developing since she began her seaweed prints, and she is now working on launching a website.
Until then, she is selling prints through her Instagram page while also working on a limited edition range.
“It’s definitely been a good year of growth for me for that, which has been kind of interesting,” she says. “Sort of gives me confidence. I’m enjoying that side as well.”