A Place to Roost

Jo McChesney is a printmaker based in Leicestershire. She graduated from Bath Academy of Art in 1985 specialising in illustration, handmade paper and print, during which time she was selected to study at the Cooper Union School of Art, New York. After working as an illustrator and part time lecturer, she travelled to Kyoto, Japan to study the traditional technique of woodblock printing. Since returning to the UK she has continued to work with woodblock prints with a more western approach to image making.

 

The natural world is the source of inspiration for her prints. Trees, weather and water are a recurrent theme, from the changing light of dense woodland to starkly lit trees against a bright sky. Her work often focuses on transient moments in time, such as ripples on water, or drawing attention to unnoticed fleeting happenings, the tiny explosions and drift of seed heads, carried by air currents. She uses collected drawings and juxtaposes these with memories of time and place. Often the images are not fully realised at the stage of carving and can evolve and change through the process of the cutting. Each print is burnished by hand which allows the soft texture of the wood to emerge.

 

She has exhibited work in Japan and across the country including the Woolwich Print Fair, RWA, Wells Contemporary and several times at the Royal Academy Summer  Exhibition.

Woodcut Hand Burnished onto Japanese Mulberry Paper 

79x80cm

Framed under glass

Edition of 60