As a child, paper and letterpress printmaker Lauren Smith walked the country lanes of her childhood with her eyes on the hedgerows. Leaf litter, flowers and berries, spiny twigs, a mouse glimpsed scuttling from branch to branch and scratching songbirds; all fell under her imaginative gaze. “The happiest memories from my childhood are from the homes that were the most remote,” Lauren says. “They were always where I felt the most at home and the most myself. I’ve always looked at the detail in nature.”
Although she was a creative child, she left school without the confidence to pursue a career in the arts and picked something vocational instead. “I don’t have any regrets, but I do
