Artwork description:

These beautiful intaglio prints are printed onto 100% cotton paper using an etching press at Inky Cuttlefish studio in London. Each print is coloured by hand, so there are slight variations between prints - this is called a variable edition (VE). The studio chop mark is on the right hand corner.

Anna Alcock is an Artist Printmaker working in a wide range of techniques. She has a BA Fine Art (Hons) from University of Kwa-Zulu Natal (First Class Honours), and MA Printmaking from The University of the Arts, London..

These pieces explore her journey to learn more about and raise awareness of the decline of pollinators, caused primarily by loss of habitat, intensive farming techniques and largescale use of pesticides and herbicides. Her journey began in 2018 when she was invited to create work in response to this theme and exhibit with four artists at Vestry House Museum in an exhibition organised by Alke Schmidt called ‘Swarm: Artists respond to the pollinator crisis’.

Following a series of visits to the Angela Marmont Centre for UK Biodiversity in the Natural History Museum in 2019, where she sketched pollinators ranging from bumblebees, bees, moths to hoverflies and beetles, she began turning her sketches into works of art. Her work in the Swarm exhibition was a triptych of linocuts.
During Lockdowns in 2020/2021 working from home with a much smaller workspace, Anna began printing smaller intaglio pieces using the sketches she had created in 2019 as the starting point to create her drypoints, etchings and screenprints of ‘Ghosts of a Bee’ series - a dead insect in a petri dish, including 24 Carat goldleaf to convey the delicacy and fragility of our pollinators, and the precious nature of their existence, finished with hints of watercolour to bring them back to life.

Anna's most recent work - and the subject of her latest "Spring Awakening" exhibition has been of the wildflowers found at Walthamstow Wetlands and which also bloom from the cracks in pavements and the wild corners of our city gardens and green spaces.

Materials used:

Drypoint on Somerset 100% cotton paper handcoloured with watercolour and goldleaf

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