Ann Lewis linocut artist

July 19, 2012

Thanks to Twitter I’ve just come across the linocuts of Ann Lewis. With a limited palette of muted colours she skillfully portrays the Welsh landscape.

Her website also has a great page showing the step-by-step process of making a reduction linocut. 

Cwm Idwal – o’r A5 linocut

Nant y Mynydd linocut (5 colour)

Ann has also written this eloquent explanation of linocut’s appeal as a medium:

Why do I work primarily in lino?

Whilst my work is varied, both in style and media, my real passion is for the humble lino. I enjoy the physical process of cutting warm, fresh lino with sharp tools and get enormous pleasure from the variety of styles and marks I can achieve with such simple materials and tools.

The nature of the medium produces an unmistakable, graphic look and feel, yet I have found that by using the medium and tools creatively, without any reservations or preconceived ideas of what they are capable of doing, it has the flexibility to enable subjects of all types to be interpreted.

Over the years I’ve chatted with many people about my chosen medium and I’ve lost count of the number of people who remember it as something they did at school, with mixed results. Unfortunately this association has for some, made it a medium to avoid, both as artists and purchasers of art, possibly through fear of not wanting to express an interest in a ‘lightweight’ form of art.

Part of my passion is to dispel what I firmly believe to be an unwarranted belief by making linocut prints acceptable as serious works of art and to demonstrate to other artists and the general public that linocutting can be as expressive, adaptive, flexible and exciting a medium as any other.

Ann Lewis – July 2011

Cysgodion hir ar lethrau’r Cnicht