Rebecca Child

My principal career has been as an architect, mainly working with historic buildings, and this I think has informed the direction of my work towards describing space, form and atmosphere. The work usually starts by looking, drawing and absorbing things around me, seeing, remembering them and sometimes imagining them afterwards in printed form. I like to work in themes, and recently have been making prints based on our local church, Cadeleigh, its extraordinary 17th century monument, and the landscape around it. In 2016 I made a printed artists book at Dartington Printmakers, as part of a highly successful exhibition of over 50 printmakers’ books held at the Devon Guild of Craftsmen. My book is based on old postcards of the Highlands of Scotland transposed many times their original size. The postcards were sent to me or collected by me in the early 1970s when I lived in Scotland. Over time they had acquired a deep emotional significance to me, and to distill them into a book was a hugely satisfying experience. That series of 10 prints has colour as its focus, as important to me as form in my work. I am currently working on a series of large landscape triptych prints, using small drawings made in a concertina sketchbook as a starting point, but using memory and imagination as well. The act of drawing is a core part of my work, particularly still life, which prompts me to use memory and imagination as well as what is seen; this sits alongside the printmaking and informs it.

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