Aye-Aye

I was born in Calcutta, daughter of the Raj, and studied Russian and French at Oxford before, many years later, taking degrees in Fine Art and Printmaking at Exeter College of Art and Camberwell College of Art in London. I have exhibited my work widely in the South West and had solo exhibitions in London and Argyll, and as far afield as Tunisia. For the last thirty years I have combined my own artistic practice with writing on art and artists, my most recent publications being Francis Hewlett – Impassioned Observer and Face Value, a biographical study of the portrait painter Andrew Festing.

 

Although I trained as a painter, I now specialise in Printmaking, particularly monotypes, the nearest form of printmaking to painting. When not at work in my Devon studios I travel extensively, taking sketchbooks with me wherever I go. Recent trips to the Antarctic, Norway and the Arctic, Vietnam and Madagascar, have furnished me with a very large library of images. These direct on-the-spot sketches form the basic starting point for my prints, although during the printing process figuration tends to give way to abstraction. With several layers of ink and various forms of stop-out the image takes on a life of its own and dictates its own direction. The excitement of discovering new marks and new colour combinations through the intermediary of the press never seems to fade.

Endangered: the current book is an alphabet of endangered animals, illustrated entirely with wood engravings. For many years Jenny has agonised about the vanishing species on our planet, due to random killing, poaching and loss of habitat. Although she supports the World Wildlife Fund, as an artist there is little she can do to help preserve these wonderful creatures. So, she decided to make a book to celebrate the rare and extraordinary animals that we still have. On her travels she has seen some of these creatures in the wild and has used her own drawings for illustration. Others have been derived from hundreds of images seen on screen.

Limited Edition Wood Engraving

25x28cm

Framed in an oak wood frame under glass