In the Studio: Angie Lewin
By Artists & Illustrators | Wed 7th Dec 2016
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The popular printmaker’s Norfolk studio is packed with inspiration for her floral designs, Terri Eaton gets an insider’s view
Where do you make most of your work?
I split my time between my house in Edinburgh, my studio in Speyside and Norfolk, where I used to live and where my business, St Jude’s Fabrics, is still based. The most important thing for me is that I’m surrounded by my reference material, whether that’s an image I’m working from, work by other artists, or objects that I’ve found.
How do you balance the business with making art?
I work a lot and I draw every day. It’s hard but you find a way of doing it. If I’m going away for a few days, I’ll take a wood engraving because it’s portable or I’ll work on sketches for a design that I can work into a print in the studio. The work I produce for St Jude’s links strongly with my sketchbook so I can tell if a drawing will make a great idea for fabric or wallpaper. It’s a natural process.
Are you attracted to work that is similar to your own?
Not always, there are a broad range of printmakers whose work I am interested in. You always pick up something new when you look at other people’s work because everybody does it differently. I use a lot of transparent ink, for example, but I like it when people use opaque inks.
Do your changing surroundings influence your work?
Yes. I used to walk along the coast everyday when I lived in in Norfolk so my work would feature plantains, reeds, cliff tops and salt marshes, but spending a lot of time in Scotland has affected the imagery. My prints are still botanical-based, but they feature more Scottish flora – you’ll see lots of birch trees, rowan trees, scabious and yellow rattle.
What colours are you naturally drawn to?
I find my Scottish prints often have a red tinge to them. Red rowanberries are indicative of a classic Scottish landscape and that bright red is something you won’t find in my Norfolk prints, which are more chalky to reflect the colour of the dried grasses and the sky.
How do you develop your subjects into a print?
I bring back all sorts of things to the studio, like shells, pebbles, driftwood, seed heads and feathers. I also like to sketch native plants in the landscape, not for botanical accuracy, but rather to capture the essence of the plant. If it’s a beautiful day, I’ll do watercolour and pencil crayon sketches, but if it is blowing a gale, I’d do more pencil sketches with colour annotations and add colour when I get back to the studio.
Are you quite organised in the studio?
My print areas are always clean because they need to be and I have boxes that have specific items from certain places, like broken sea urchins and limpet shells from the Hebrides, but more often than not everything gets quite jumbled up. Wood engraving is great because you require so little space. It’s not like screenprinting where I need wash out areas and more space, especially as I use oil-based, transparent inks.
What’s your most treasured piece of equipment?
My wood engraving and lino tools, which I’ve had since I left college in the mid-1980s. I like having that continuity. There are so many beautiful things associated with wood engraving – the wooden blocks, the leather sandbags, the rollers – it is what attracted me to printmaking in the first place.
And what’s the most surprising item in your studio?
I’ve got lots of bit and pieces I’ve collected over the years, like a chunk of metal from an Orkney beach that came off a ship. I’ve got an Edward Bawden print above my fireplace – his work is something to which I aspire.
The full version of this article first appeared in the November 2015 issue of Artists & Illustrators. Get the latest issue here…
Find out more at www.angielewin.co.uk
Read more: in the studio with illustrator Rose Blake and watch a video showing how Angie Lewin made Winter Spey.
Photos: Simon Lewin and Alun Callender
https://www.artistsandillustrators.co.uk/featured-artist/in-the-studio-angie-lewin/