Elemental Icon III

Brenda Hartill is an experimental printmaker and mixed-media artist, widely known for her richly textured, embossed works that abstract the essence of the landscape. Working across collagraph, etching, encaustic, painting, and collage, her practice is driven by a fascination with erosion, weather patterns, growth formations, and the universal organic forms found in nature. These themes are expressed through intricate layers of material and texture, often enhanced with silver and gold leaf, creating luminous surfaces that shift with the light.

 

Originally trained in theatrical design at the Central School of Art and Design, Hartill’s early career in stage lighting and set construction informs her approach to light and structure. Her work has evolved from careful, figurative drawing to an expressive, abstract visual language, where layering and materiality are central to her process. She describes her approach as sculptural—building up embossed surfaces, cutting, collaging, and carving into materials before adding colour, resulting in works that are as much about physicality as they are about image.

 

In recent years, watercolour has taken an increasing role in her practice, often in combination with embossed collagraph elements. Using 600gsm handmade paper, she explores how pigment pools and floods across undulating surfaces, allowing her to create works that embrace both precision and unpredictability. Each embossed plate acts as a dynamic ground—sometimes deeply incised, sometimes more delicate—inviting a play between control and spontaneity. The plate itself is a crucial stage in the process, existing in a liminal space between idea and realisation, holding the memory of each mark before revealing its final image in print.

 

Alongside her professional career, Hartill has amassed a collection of found natural objects—particularly driftwood gathered from the shores of New Zealand, where she lived in her early years. These small, polished fragments, shaped by waves and sand, serve as quiet muses, embodying the same forces of time and transformation that inspire her work. The subtle, organic contours of these weathered forms often find echoes in her prints and paintings, carrying the narrative of nature’s gradual interventions.

 

She likes to think of her work as an open invitation for viewers to find their own connections. “I don’t like to spell out the imagery too specifically,” she reflects. “Most of us are moved by light in a certain way—a glint on water, the blue of a distant hill, the weathered patina of an old surface—without needing an explanation as to why we feel drawn to it. I want my work to resonate in the same way.”

 

A member of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, the Rye Society of Artists, and Pure Arts Group, Hartill exhibits widely across the UK and internationally, including in New Zealand, Australia, and Spain. She is also the author of Collagraphs and Mixed Media Printmaking, a seminal text on her sculptural approach to printmaking.