Anne Desmet, RA: Wood Engraving: A Personal Approach

A new in-depth book (published by The Crowood Press) on the art and craft of wood engraving, by Anne Desmet RA, offers a fount of information, advice and top tips into working effectively in this medium. In it, Desmet generously shares her extensive knowledge garnered over 40 years’ engraving, imparting traditional techniques and new, never-before-published possibilities extending the medium in mixed media, collage and digital directions.

Only the third artist ever elected a Royal Academician for creative wood engraving, and fresh from her latest major solo exhibition at the Escher in the Palace museum in The Hague, for LOPF Desmet will talk about her own approach to the medium in the context both of her new book and of her brand new series of engravings inspired by an artist’s residency in Cumbria last year (represented on the stand at Eames Fine Art).

The talk will be followed by an informal Q&A and Anne will also provide a hands-on demonstration of the technique of engraving on end-grain woodblocks using a wide range of specialist tools. Desmet offers a fresh perspective on a medium with incredible capacity for expressing light, shade and precision-cut detail. Her talk and demonstration will illuminate the finer workings of this historic technique and show some of the extraordinary imagery it is capable of producing.