Ian Brooks | Across Skye to Beinn a’ Chapuill, 2024
Aquatint
Media Dimensions: 38 x 19 cm
Image Dimensions: 30 x 10 cm
Edition of 20
Framed/unframed
Ian Brooks’ work is rooted in close observation of the landscape and a fascination with its small-scale details and textures. He aims to evoke the unique atmosphere and sense of place of a specific location and point in time. The works included here all derive from sketches made on location using pencil and washes of acrylic ink. Back in the studio, the sketches are redrawn directly onto copper plate. Working primarily with sugar lift and spit-bite aquatint, the images are built up in layers of tightly-controlled drawing, and more abstract, semi-random marks which mimic the natural textures of the landscape. While working, Ian finds a constant tension between a natural tendency towards realism and finely rendered detail, and a desire to simplify and abstract the image to achieve a looser rendering that maintains the energy of sketches made in the field. Etching in general, and aquatint in particular, can be rather mercurial processes. The acid bite is subject to a multitude of changeable factors only partly under the artist’s control. To make a successful print requires responding to the vagaries of the process, and ultimately leaving reference material, and sometimes the initial intention, behind, and following the needs of each particular image. Ian was awarded the 2020 New Light Printmaker’s Prize, the Original Print Prize at the ING Discerning Eye exhibition 2020, and the People’s Printmaker prize by vote of visitors to the Flourish Award for Excellence in Printmaking exhibition, 2022.
Aquatint
Media Dimensions: 38 x 19 cm
Image Dimensions: 30 x 10 cm
Edition of 20
Framed/unframed
Ian Brooks’ work is rooted in close observation of the landscape and a fascination with its small-scale details and textures. He aims to evoke the unique atmosphere and sense of place of a specific location and point in time. The works included here all derive from sketches made on location using pencil and washes of acrylic ink. Back in the studio, the sketches are redrawn directly onto copper plate. Working primarily with sugar lift and spit-bite aquatint, the images are built up in layers of tightly-controlled drawing, and more abstract, semi-random marks which mimic the natural textures of the landscape. While working, Ian finds a constant tension between a natural tendency towards realism and finely rendered detail, and a desire to simplify and abstract the image to achieve a looser rendering that maintains the energy of sketches made in the field. Etching in general, and aquatint in particular, can be rather mercurial processes. The acid bite is subject to a multitude of changeable factors only partly under the artist’s control. To make a successful print requires responding to the vagaries of the process, and ultimately leaving reference material, and sometimes the initial intention, behind, and following the needs of each particular image. Ian was awarded the 2020 New Light Printmaker’s Prize, the Original Print Prize at the ING Discerning Eye exhibition 2020, and the People’s Printmaker prize by vote of visitors to the Flourish Award for Excellence in Printmaking exhibition, 2022.
Aquatint
Media Dimensions: 38 x 19 cm
Image Dimensions: 30 x 10 cm
Edition of 20
Framed/unframed
Ian Brooks’ work is rooted in close observation of the landscape and a fascination with its small-scale details and textures. He aims to evoke the unique atmosphere and sense of place of a specific location and point in time. The works included here all derive from sketches made on location using pencil and washes of acrylic ink. Back in the studio, the sketches are redrawn directly onto copper plate. Working primarily with sugar lift and spit-bite aquatint, the images are built up in layers of tightly-controlled drawing, and more abstract, semi-random marks which mimic the natural textures of the landscape. While working, Ian finds a constant tension between a natural tendency towards realism and finely rendered detail, and a desire to simplify and abstract the image to achieve a looser rendering that maintains the energy of sketches made in the field. Etching in general, and aquatint in particular, can be rather mercurial processes. The acid bite is subject to a multitude of changeable factors only partly under the artist’s control. To make a successful print requires responding to the vagaries of the process, and ultimately leaving reference material, and sometimes the initial intention, behind, and following the needs of each particular image. Ian was awarded the 2020 New Light Printmaker’s Prize, the Original Print Prize at the ING Discerning Eye exhibition 2020, and the People’s Printmaker prize by vote of visitors to the Flourish Award for Excellence in Printmaking exhibition, 2022.
