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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 1968-2007:
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,
The Power of the Press - 500 years of printing in Scotland.
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).
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 2007);
Scottish Bookplates, The Bookplate Society, 2007
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.
Wood-engraving, Angel of the Lands.
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