Wood engravings by Anne Desmet and FriendsA Collection of new and recent works on paper by Neil Bousfield, Anne Desmet, Edwina Ellis, Peter Lawrence, Peter S Smith and Roy Willingham
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5 May - 23 June 2018 |
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This exhibition, curated by Anne Desmet RA, will showcase contemporary wood engravings from a selected group of established printmakers (Neil Bousfield, Anne Desmet, Edwina Ellis, Peter Lawrence, Peter S Smith and Roy Willingham). "I am delighted to have been invited to curate this exhibition of contemporary wood engravings for Kevis House Gallery. I have chosen to focus on the works of six established artists in the belief that the opportunity to see a collection of works by each one will shed the particular light and offer the specific insights into each artist's abiding themes that one normally only gains via a solo show. I also hope the exhibition will demonstrate the shared concerns that create lively relationships between the work of all six of us. I have known the wood engravings of each of these fine artists for years. Technically, they are all expert practitioners of the art yet, in addition, each brings something refreshingly unusual and innovative to this wonderful historic medium. From the most highly topographical and figurative to the most abstract, from editioned print to experimental engraved collage, from single-lock black-and-white print to multiple, overlaid, colour blocks, there are shared concerns and rhythms that link all our works and throw up interesting connections between them." Anne Desmet RA |
Anne Desmet RA
Desmet chooses architectural motifs as her subject matter. However whilst her engravings depict specific places, they are also intended to represent something universal; the way light brings life to a subject; the way apparently permanent structures are poignantly prone to the ravages and redevelopments of time, weather and human intervention. Her interests also spreads into what our buildings tell us about mankind's great aspirations, follies, passions and humour.
Desmet enjoys playing with shape, form and structure - to break down and rebuild existing structures into invented or more abstract forms through the medium of collage. These small scale, highly detailed works which take, often, many weeks to create, may evoke in the viewer a sense both of timelessness or of the passage of time - or both ideas simultaneously. These are the abiding thoughts and threads that have connected her prints and collages since her first tentative engravings (in the mid 1980s) to today, whether their subject is ancient Rome London's Olympic site, Brooklyn Bridge, a derelict neo-classical interior or Eton College,
Desmet chooses architectural motifs as her subject matter. However whilst her engravings depict specific places, they are also intended to represent something universal; the way light brings life to a subject; the way apparently permanent structures are poignantly prone to the ravages and redevelopments of time, weather and human intervention. Her interests also spreads into what our buildings tell us about mankind's great aspirations, follies, passions and humour.
Desmet enjoys playing with shape, form and structure - to break down and rebuild existing structures into invented or more abstract forms through the medium of collage. These small scale, highly detailed works which take, often, many weeks to create, may evoke in the viewer a sense both of timelessness or of the passage of time - or both ideas simultaneously. These are the abiding thoughts and threads that have connected her prints and collages since her first tentative engravings (in the mid 1980s) to today, whether their subject is ancient Rome London's Olympic site, Brooklyn Bridge, a derelict neo-classical interior or Eton College,
"This is one of a series of engravings I created as artist-in-residence at Eton College. Whilst the architectural motifs I chose as my subject matter are usually of specific places, they are also intended to represent something universal: the way light brings life to a subject - whether animate or inanimate; or the way apparently permanent structures are poignantly prone to ravages and redevelopments of time, weather and human intervention. I am interested, too, in what our buildings tell us about mankind's great aspirations, follies, passions and humour."
Anne Desmet RA
Library Dome
Wood engraving
14 x 11.5 cm (image)
Edition size: 30
Neil Bousfield
Bousfield is a younger artist whose engravings started out as imagery in self generated novels without words, following in the grand tradition of Frans Masereel and Lynd Ward and bearing striking similarities to the characteristic noir atmosphere of Ward's 1930s engravings. More recently, prints divorced from the book form have developed a unique voice while retaining a strong sense of narrative. Experiments with subtle overlays of printed colour, tome and pattern have developed from vigorous, keenly observed drawings of beaches, harbours and landscapes near his home in Norfolk, coupled with imaginative considerations of aerial views, contours and the geography of Ordnance Survey maps.
Bousfield is a younger artist whose engravings started out as imagery in self generated novels without words, following in the grand tradition of Frans Masereel and Lynd Ward and bearing striking similarities to the characteristic noir atmosphere of Ward's 1930s engravings. More recently, prints divorced from the book form have developed a unique voice while retaining a strong sense of narrative. Experiments with subtle overlays of printed colour, tome and pattern have developed from vigorous, keenly observed drawings of beaches, harbours and landscapes near his home in Norfolk, coupled with imaginative considerations of aerial views, contours and the geography of Ordnance Survey maps.
"The work here explores the notion of place and home encapsulated through experience, memory and narrative, made tangible within drawing and engraving." - Neil Bousfield
High Tide Chancers
Wood engraving
From Place and Home series of engravings
12 x 19,5 cm
Edition size: 40
Edwina Ellis
Born in Sydney, Ellis has lived in London and Wales since 1972. Ellis worked initially in jewellery and fabric design, but by 1978 wood engraving and print making had taken over.
Ellis established her reputation with meticulously wrought, observational, landscape and still life engravings. An amazing facility with tone and pattern in black-and-white engravings, such as her Maxims and Locks series, was matched by an ability, using perfectly registered multiple blocks to create signing overlays of vibrant colour. Her Australian outback prints boast parched yellow desert plants vivid with purple shadows beneath intensely blue skies.
More recently, PhD studies led her to experiment "with colour and compound engraving and printing and continue to augment the modular collection of engravings, vinyl cuts and linocuts developed during this research "My current aim is to harness and combine the techniques I have developed in the belief that experimental journeys close in on what it's all about" Edwina Ellis Cutweed Pairs BY2 Wood engraving on polymer & linocut Complete images 57 x 22.8 cm (Each roundel 27.8 x 22.8 cm) |
Peter Lawrence
Lawrence's engravings have long celebrated the glorious abstract potential of the wood engraving medium at a time when many other British practitioners stayed firmly within the figurative tradition of Bewick.
In Lawrence's abstract engravings, the spaces between blocks printed in multiples on one sheet of paper create their own strong shapes and patterns, as important to the finished image as the engraving on the blocks themselves.
"Dark Corners is one of the first completely abstract prints. Working from an outline drawing of forms, the engraving is largely improvised. Other prints are abstracted from life, or combine a series of differently styled engravings within an abstracted from, sometimes using multiple blocks to resemble collage."
Peter Lawrence
Dark Corners
Wood engraving
From Place and Home series of engravings
15 x 18 cm
Edition size: 75
"Dark Corners is one of the first completely abstract prints. Working from an outline drawing of forms, the engraving is largely improvised. Other prints are abstracted from life, or combine a series of differently styled engravings within an abstracted from, sometimes using multiple blocks to resemble collage."
Peter Lawrence
Dark Corners
Wood engraving
From Place and Home series of engravings
15 x 18 cm
Edition size: 75
Peter S Smith
Smith's engravings, like Ellis's, have a strong textural quality and a pervading sense of the abstract within the particular. "On sunny days," he says, "while waiting for the train, I draw my shadow across the station: some of the drawings become wood engravings.". With characteristic modest understatement, what he doesn't say is that these almost obsessive drawings fill numerous small sketchbooks compiled over many years and demonstrate a Boyle-family-like preoccupation with the different textures, patterns and tonal convergences of tarmac and pavement, brick and stone, painted road marking, sunlight and shadow.
Smith's engravings are fascinating both as semi-abstract compositions in light and shade but also because the character of each engraved mark and the combinations of marks he makes are unpredictable and unexpected - like a musician who plays a familiar instrument yet creates a wonderfully unique sound like nothing you've ever heard before
"On sunny days, while waiting for the train, I draw my shadow across the station: some of the drawings become wood engravings"
Peter S Smith
Across the Station
Wood engraving
From Place and Home series of engravings
14 x 9 cm
Smith's engravings are fascinating both as semi-abstract compositions in light and shade but also because the character of each engraved mark and the combinations of marks he makes are unpredictable and unexpected - like a musician who plays a familiar instrument yet creates a wonderfully unique sound like nothing you've ever heard before
"On sunny days, while waiting for the train, I draw my shadow across the station: some of the drawings become wood engravings"
Peter S Smith
Across the Station
Wood engraving
From Place and Home series of engravings
14 x 9 cm
Roy Willingham
Willingham has long been concerned with the fine balance between the figurative and the abstract. His starting point is often meticulously observed drawings yet many diverse influences including Russian Constructivist graphics, Edward Wadsworth's Dazzle Ship engravings, Picasso, Matisse and a vibrant yet finely calibrated sense of colour and tone have long invested his work with great energy and originality. They are truly miniature marvels.
Willingham has long been concerned with the fine balance between the figurative and the abstract. His starting point is often meticulously observed drawings yet many diverse influences including Russian Constructivist graphics, Edward Wadsworth's Dazzle Ship engravings, Picasso, Matisse and a vibrant yet finely calibrated sense of colour and tone have long invested his work with great energy and originality. They are truly miniature marvels.
"This print derives from the memory of a walk over the South Downs from Hassocks to Lewes and a solitary tree near Ditchling Beacon standing out against the emptiness of the downs landscape."
Roy Willingham
Downland
Wood engraving
12.3 x 4.5 cm
Edition size: 12