Anne Desmet – St Barbe Museum + Art Gallery, UK

Shorelines/Skylines is a unique exhibition examining contemporary artists’ interest in the boundaries between sea and land, sea and sky and the skylines of urban and rural settings. It features ten leading printmakers using a range of media to explore the places where the elements meet; along the British coast, in cities and suburbs or out in field and copse. Their handling of the subjects ranges from the dramatic to the serene.

Anne Desmet RA is one of our leading wood engravers, pushing the medium in new directions. Her selection includes visions of New York skyscrapers, London during the Blitz and kaleidoscopic reimaginings of the capital today. One of Britain’s best-known printmakers, Brighton-based Janet Brooke uses screenprint and linocut to create strikingly bold images of its piers, promenades and wind turbines, also portraying London’s Shard and Wren churches. Winchester-based printmaker Kate Dicker provides intimate and intricate wood engravings contrasted with larger scale painterly monotypes of riverside industry.

Paul Catherall’s graphic and colourful linocuts of London landmarks show an awareness of Edward Wadsworth’s woodcuts but bring their own very contemporary aesthetic to the subject. Sara Lee’s Japanese-style woodcuts provide a meditative and minimalist approach to coastlines and rural horizons. Rachel Gracey’s lithographs bring a painterly approach to quiet corners of the countryside and details of suburban life. Roy Willingham draws on an eclectic range of influences to create scenes of bays and harbours that encompass representation and abstraction. The screenprints of wildlife artist Kittie Jones capture the movement and hubbub of gannets nesting on the Bass Rock. Dorset-based wood engraver and linocutter Robin Mackenzie is drawn to the action of wind and wave on the striking rock structures of the Jurassic coast.

The exhibition investigates how each artist is drawn to this subject matter and examines the thought processes and techniques that result in such eclectic responses to a common theme. Shorelines/Skylines is a selling exhibition and provides an ideal opportunity for residents and visitors to the New Forest to acquire affordable art by some of Britain’s most exciting and respected printmakers.