Angie Lewin: Research

Angie Lewin

Angie Lewin is a British printmaker working in linocut, wood engraving, lithography (printing from a flat surface) and screen printing. Angie was born in 1964 in Cheshire. Angie studied BA (Hons) Fine Art Printmaking at Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design between 1983 and 1986; followed by a year’s part-time postgraduate printmaking at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. After working in London as an illustrator, she studied horticulture for a while but then decided to move back to Norfolk in order to make a return to printmaking. Printmaking was a definite passion for Lewin. She now mainly lives and works in Scotland. As well as designing fabrics and stationery for St. Jude which she runs with her husband Simon. In 2006 she was elected to The Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers; in 2008 to The Society of Wood Engravers; in 2010 was elected to The Art workers guild, and in 2016 was elected to The Royal Watercolour Society. Her work can currently be seen in these galleries.

She works from her studios in Norfolk and in the Cairngorms, where she is greatly inspired by the natural environment. Angie’s Images are based on plant forms, especially seed heads seen against the sea and sky. Influences also include the contrasting landscape and native plants of the Scottish Highlands. Her designs are also extensively used on a range of greetings cards and stationery.

Artist’s Style:

Angie Lewin is attracted to the relationships between plant communities on an intimate level, even the fine lines of insect eggs on a flower bud are observed her my work. Still lives often incorporate seedpods, grasses, flints and dried seaweed collected on walking and sketching trips.  She tends to use a variety of different styles of printmaking when creating her inspiring pieces. For example, Linocut which is a printmaking technique using a variant of woodcut in which a sheet of linoleum (sometimes mounted on a wooden block) is used as a relief surface. A design is cut into the linoleum surface with a sharp knife (V-shaped chisel or gouge) with the raised uncarved areas representing a reversal reflection of the parts that will show printed. The linoleum sheet is inked with a roller and then impressed onto paper or fabric. Angie also works with watercolors and wood engravings and creates beautiful landscapes.

Fig1

This is one of Angie Lewin’s linocuts’ pieces called ‘Festival Fireworks’. The piece features many different plants like a sunflower and a dandelion with a pattern of white lines. Angie Lewin does not carve realistic linocuts and does not tend to use realistic colours for the ink. This is her own creative style inspired by the beauty and wonders of nature that can form anything. All the plants in this print are green and yellow, and all patterns are made in white whilst the background is a sky blue. The colours are kept simple except for the green which has two different shades to show a contrast in lighting and texture. The plants look like they are all moving with the wind like a dance. This, therefore, relates to the title of the piece as dancing tends to occur at festivals and the circular outline of white dashes could represent the movement at a firework.

Angie is creative with her work and her work always has to be doing something different or out of the ordinary to personify or create something amazing (in this case- festival fireworks). Furthermore, festivals tend to be cultural, traditional and mainly orthodox so the simplicity of the colours again represents the title of the piece. There seems to be a chain of daisies surrounding the largest flower. You can sense movement because of the pronounced lines. Angie’s work is inspiring as something different is always happening to create a certain mood for a piece. In this piece, you feel excitement and joy as nothing is still and everything seems to be moving around.

The large flower at the center of the piece is transparent so looks unnatural. It reminds you of the piece and what is happening as it is not real. Also, in this piece, you can see fireworks by the plants that seem to be shooting from the sky creating a magical theme. Through all the confusion and different interpretations, a theme of nature can still be seen due to the warm colours used for the plants that tend to be seen in plants and the ‘sky blue’ sky. Altogether, Angie Lewin keeps the theme of nature in all her pieces and adapts it to create something new. This adaption creates her style. All in all, for complex printmaking, her work can be understood quite well and looks like a normal painting.

Fig2

‘Stopping by the woods’ is an interesting creation of Lewin’s made using wood crafting. She includes many trees, grass, a lake, the moon and other plants. Again, this expresses her love for nature. Again, her plants are moving as if they are dancing. Angie likes to create pieces that look as if they are moving and are not just still and boring. The trees all sway in presumably the wind. However, in contradiction to the previous piece, the context of the piece is more realistic as it literally resembles the wood as her carvings have similar characteristics to what they would actually look like in real life.

In this piece, Angie only uses the colours blue and white. The cold colours give off negative vibes and create the harsh, cold emotions in the landscape. The artist uses lines and dots to carve the plants creating their physique and texture. The lake has black dashes that create the ripples. Furthermore, the grass seems to be moving in a different direction to that of the trees creating a scary atmosphere. After all the woods have always known to be creepy, especially in fairy tales, so the fact that this piece is called ‘stopping by the woods’, a theme of danger is created. For example, Red riding hood was not allowed to stray from her path or stop in the woods or else something bad would happen. Also, the mon is full which connotes the supernatural and danger. This piece is quite unnatural again.

In conclusion, Angie Lewin uses her inspiration of nature to create landscapes that are out of the ordinary and can be interpreted by the piece’s title. Her work brings the still plants alive due to a sense of movement and her colours (although not always precise) tend to add to the theme/ mood of the piece.

Bibliography:
http://www.banksidegallery.com/
https://www.re-printmakers.com/

Illustration;
Fig.1 - https://scottish-gallery.co.uk/images/uploads/works/Angie_Lewin_Festival_Fireworks.jpg
Fig. 2 - ttps://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0031/1712/products/Angie_Lewin_Stopping_By_Woods.jpg?v=1449694235