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15 aquatint, but she taught herself the complexities of lithography. Later she made photo-lithographs, screen prints and collotypes, combining processes to produce experimental mono-prints. Her graphic techniques found their way into her painting as she broke down the barriers between these traditionally separated disciplines. She was very strict about correct procedures and health and safety regulations in the print studio and cursed and swore at offenders. Despite being a smoker, she never tolerated cigarettes around solvents or inks. She wore training shoes for comfort and a white t-shirt (several sizes too large) as an overall. This became caked in printers' ink on the le side, where she habitually wiped her right hand. Her failing eyesight was a nagging concern and she was constantly irritated by her dirty spectacles so always kept a box of tissues at hand. Prunella was willing to try anything to create an interesting pictorial result and would sometimes place inked-up objects onto a 'disobedient canvas' and then run it through the etching press. The edges became frayed and torn – but this added to the effect. Netting and scrim from the theatre department, paper doylies from the café, circuit boards and wiring from a local electrical shop were pressed into so -ground etchings, in an attempt to work up valuable textures. Her systematic approach to picture making originated in her disciplined training as a graphic designer, typesetter and map-maker during the war. Once she had worked though all the necessary stages and preparatory phases, producing one indirect mark a er another, a magical print would finally appear. Martin Ireland, one of her students, recalls that Pru worked methodically, like a chess player, thinking three images ahead, each move planned in advance. She knew precisely what she wanted and bided her time until she achieved the required effect – perhaps it didn't appear until two weeks later. 20 Titles usually came while the painting or printing process was underway or a er the work was completed. O en she felt that the image required no descriptive assistance and applied the epithet Untitled to it. At other times she would select the singularly appropriate titles such as Package Piece or Constellation or By the Seaside. Prunella's early work, depicting fishermen, lorry drivers and Thames-side cranes, was obviously anchored by figuration, despite the geometric treatments and habitual flattenings of form. Her later work, with its richly varied surfaces adorned with enigmatic contours and puzzling silhouettes, has o en been categorised as abstract. Nevertheless it was always rooted in something seen or recalled. She claimed to have never painted an abstract picture: Nothing that I do is abstract. I can locate all the ingredients of a painting in the richness of the outside world, the world of perception...If I take a thing from the real world, detach it and put it into a painting, something takes over that goes further than anything that I can logically describe or assess. 21 Far from being immediate responses to, or direct representations of the observed world, Prunella's paintings are the products of several layers of experience and ritual. Her creative stages included aspects of observation, filtered memory, accumulated understanding and hands-on experimentation with materials. Furthermore, there was an on-going dialogue with well-worked themes and motifs – fragments from the unconsidered wastelands of the modern 'urbscape', as she called it. Drawing, note-taking and photography also played their part and when these creative processes collided, a painting might emerge. In 1982 I quizzed her over where her inspiration predominantly lay – was it in what her eye perceived or in what she imagined. She replied: Where do the paintings come from – would be a better question. Just glanced at – perhaps in passing, noticed rather than stared at. Something that settles on you and not something studied. Observation, detachment, replacement. 22 12. From conversations with John Ball. 13. From an interview with Bryan Robertson, 1996. 14. From an interview with Gerard Hastings, op. cit. 15. From an interview with Bryan Robertson, 1982. 16. See Man by Fence, 1958, Frances Spalding Prunella Clough 'regions unmapped' 2012, p.121 no:71 17. See Barrels in a Yard, 1955, p.39. 18. From an interview with Gerard Hastings, op. cit.. 19. This tough, interrogational approach was typical of her teaching method whenever I was present as she discussed Gordon Hargreaves' work. Prunella's students agree that her direct, cross- examinations left no place to hide. 20. Martin Ireland, from conversations with Gerard Hastings, 2014. 21. Prunella Clough, from an interview with Bryan Robertson, 1996. 22. Ibid.