Home
Wood-engraving, The Sea
Angela
Lemaire’s printmaking
consists of most forms of relief print including
wood-engraving.
She has been interested in literature and the combination of text
with image,
and a lot of her printmaking has been applied to fine press books,
her
own artist books or as commissions for
illustration.
She also paints and writes and
has given talks on a variety of themes including her own work
and
books.
This website shows
only a few examples
of her work.
Further enquiries are welcome - see contact.
Angela Lemaire was
born in
Buckinghamshire and went to the
Lyçée Français de
Londres
and Wispers School in Sussex, then to PLC Pymble in Sydney
Australia.
She returned to Britain in 1962 and went to Chelsea School of Art,
London (1963)
and Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts (1964-67, Dip. AD.), where she
was taught
relief printmaking by Michael
Rothenstein.
After this she went to Morley College,
Lambeth, where she continued etching.
The wood-engraver Frank Martin, who taught at
Camberwell,
gave her a box of wood-engraving tools which had belonged to a
colleague
of his who had died.
With these tools she taught herself wood-engraving; it
hadn’t been
taught at art-school.
She was by then already friends with the wood-engraver and letterer
Michael Renton and had watched him at work.
She decided she would work principally
as a printmaker and with text and image.
Woodcut 23x45cm, Harlequin, Death & the Drummer Girl, 2005
Mixed and group shows 1968-2009
Proscenium Galleries,
London;
Collingwood College, Durham;
Assoc. of Applied Arts, Scotland & North England;
the Bath Festival;
Katherine House Gallery, Marlborough;
Hart Street Gallery, Fife;
Edinburgh College of Art;
venues with the Scottish Association of Woodworkers;
The Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh;
Robson Gallery, Selkirk;
5th British Int. Miniature Print Exhibition;
DLI Museum & Durham Art Gallery;
The Lennox Gallery, London;
group shows with the Society of Wood Engravers;
Biennials in Switzerland, Belgium and Italy;
Fine Press book fairs;
Mellerstain Gallery, Mellerstain House, Scottish Borders
The Power of the Press - 500 years of printing in Scotland
The Cominge of the
Fludde, The Britten-Pears
Library,
Aldeburgh
A Finer Line, Mainhill Gallery, Harestanes, Scottish Borders
Solo
shows:
Stadia Graphics Gallery, Sydney, Australia (1975);
The Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh (1977);
St. Mary’s Music School, Edinburgh Festival Fringe (1993);
A retrospective of prints and books 1970-2000 at Grey
College,
Durham, (2001);
Aikwood Tower, Selkirk, (2002).
EICSP (Edinburgh International Centre for Spirituality & Peace),
Eye of the Heart, Chaplaincy
Centre (2009)
Commissions have
included engravings
for
Graham Kerr’s The
Complete Galloping Gourmet Cookbook,
Grosset & Dunlap, New York (1972);
Ian Hamilton-Finlay’s More
Proverbs for Jacobins (1992);
The Folio Society’s The
Folio Golden Treasury (1997) and
others.
Work has appeared in various publications including
Forty-Five Wood Engravers,
Whittington Press (1982);
Sixteen Contemporary Wood-engravers,
printed by David Esslemont
(1982);
FISAE Catalogue of European Ex Libris artists (1984);
Modern British Bookplates,
Silent Books (1990);
Engravers Two,
Society of Wood Engravers, Silent Books (1992);
An Engravers’ Globe: Wood Engraving World-Wide in
the
Twenty-First Century, Primrose
Hill Press, 2002;
International Contemporary Bookplates,
(Portugal 2006);
Scottish Bookplates, The
Bookplate Society, 2006,
and others.
Angela
Lemaire’s books produced
in collaboration with The Old
Stile Press, all of which have
included texts of her choosing, an Afterword written by her
and
relief images,
either engraving, wood and linocut, are:
The Journey of Thomas the Rhymer
(2000);
The Pyed Pyper (2002);
JOYS, passages from
the works of Thomas Traherne,
(2004);
Secret Commonwealth by Mr Robert Kirk, 1691,
(2006);
A Christmas Sequence - From
the Chester Miracle Cycle,
Introduction by Dr Andrew Plant (2008).
Much of this graphic
work, the prints
and books and other commissioned work are held in archive in
the National Library of Scotland. This archive
includes
letters to her from Michael Renton as well as
letters to her from a wide circle of artists, writers, typographers and
friends.
Other libraries which hold the special books include
Swathmore Library, Pennsylvania, USA;
Armstrong Browning Library, Wako, Texas, USA;
Eton College Library, Cambridge University Library,
The Bodleian Library and others, as well as private collectors.
Some bookplates are held at the Museo Del-Ex Libris, San Paolo di Jesi
and the Museo
Communale Arte e Informazione, Senigallia, Ancona,
Italy.
Angela Lemaire lives and works in the Scottish Borders and has one son.
The Cat Who Went to Heaven,
wood-engraving