Anne Desmet talks about her Influences and Working Methods

On the 18 December last year, I visited the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester and loved Anne S-Desmet's exhibition, Kaleidoscope in the Print Room. I was fascinated by her work and wanted to know more about her detailed drawings and collages. Anne agreed to give us a talk in August ; we have a recording on the website and I took photos and made notes during the talk.

Anne spent the years between 1982-5 having many operations, so although not in school, there was plenty of opportunity for drawing in pencil and biro. Anne attended Ruskin School of Art in Oxford where she was studying woodcut and wood engraving. Her tutor Jean Lodge suggested she could lavish time on fine detail in printmaking. She was a fan of Escher, liking the escapist element of Ovid fascinated by transformations and metamorphosing images.

In addition to the Pallant House gallery exhibition, Anne also had one in the Ashmolean in 2020 celebrating a centenary of wood engraving; engraving with tools that come to fine points to get the detail required. It's important to use wood with a constant rate of growth for this; box wood is very good for wood engraving. I photographed some of the slides Anne showed which appear below:

Above: 7 small wood engravings & collages of Liverpool landmarks 2014-6

12 drawings on A4 and A5 paper 1982-5 these drawings above give an idea of Anne's work pre art school

M.C.Escher 'Fish and Scales'

In 1989 Anne won a scholarship to the British School of Rome and spent a year doing masses of drawings

Above left Panteon (Tondo) linocut prints collaged on paper 2003 and on the right Pantheon linocut print on paper 2000

The culmination of Anne's year at the British School in Rome was a book containing a year of scholarship drawings which were lost in a bag snatch; Anne returned to Italy many times  experimenting with images and how to present them. She loves the theatricality of Piranesi, Piero del Francesca, particularly his amazing compositions.

Above Anne collaged wood engravings, linocuts and lithographs onto 40 razor shells in 2022

Above 'British Museum-Blue Sky' wood engraving, linocut and stencils 2023

Above 5 views of St.Paul's mostly wood engravings on blocks of 20 year old holly which had been maturing in the wardrobe for years, although the one on the right is a digital print which raised some eyebrows

Above left, St.Paul's at Dawn and on the right, Claude Monet some of his paintings of Rouen Cathedral

Above Wood engravings and linocut prints on paper stuck onto 18 razor shells.

Anne went to college in Manhattan in 2014 where there was a windchill of -15 degrees

and completed quite a few linocuts of Brooklyn Bridge, influenced by Nevinson and Wadsworth whose works 'Looking through Brooklyn Bridge' and 'Dazzle Ship in Drydock' appear on the right.

More Brooklyn Bridge in the afternoon and in snow

Above in 'Manhattan \storm' a wood engraving and linocut, you can see the influence of Utagawa Hiroshige

Above The Tower of Babel by Pieter Brueghel was the inspiration for 'Homage to Brueghel' in 2023, it's a tower in Bologna

Above 'Build your own Babel Tower' linocuts and wood engraving collaged onto museum board, Eric Ravilious also cited as an influence

Above 'Early Flight' on the left and more Italian visits for the three on the right

I'll finish with three beautiful wood engravings, the top 'Oxford Light' and the other two of Bath Circus which work so well. The talk was fantastic as you can imagine from these images and can be seen on our website