Prunella Clough was born in London, the niece of the noted furniture designer Eileen Gray. She studied at Chelsea School of Art, and when war interrupted her studies, worked as a mapping and engineering draughtswoman, from 1940–45. After the war, she visited various fishing ports on the East Anglian coast, and much of her work of the period centred on her interest in the working life of the dockers and fishermen she observed. She was a consummate printmaker, using her own printing press to create subtle and poetic images, often combining the organic with the geometric. This gouache of a coil of rope takes a robust piece of working material and transforms it into a semi-ethereal abstraction, its hard outlines softened by the shallow and indefinite ground surrounding it. Throughout the 1950s Clough was part of an artistic group which included Michael Ayrton, John Minton, John Craxton and the poet Dylan Thomas.

Thresholds, British Council 2010