Contemporary woodcuts by Merlyn Chesterman have an immediate and profound impact on visitors. Many of us love the ocean and feel its pull. Merlyn lives by the sea in North Devon and swims regularly, bringing the experience directly to her work. Her ability to translate moving water and changing light to static wood and paper, while retaining the sense and qualities of both, is uncanny.
"Looking back over my sketchbooks, it surprises me slightly that I have always had the same preoccupations- the natural world and its beauty, danger, remoteness, weather, mystery - whilst at the same time, coming from a scientific background, needing the physical rendition, of waves for example, to be truthful.
Increasingly, I feel a responsibility that my work should in some way draw attention to what we are in danger of losing. People want beauty in their lives. I want to share what interests and moves me, perhaps a summer wind or the reflection of a cloud on the sea, the colour of light shining through a wave, a little island, no more than a rock, emerging from the mist ... catching the ephemeral. My work is mostly about atmosphere, what I see and feel around me. I am driven by a sense of excitement, and work fundamentally at an abstract level, with a secondary, literal surface. Even in woodcuts, as with painting, I try to keep my options for development open, to keep the process alive.
Shiko Munakata, the great Japanese woodblock artist, said: “I want to strip my work of effects, until it stands monolithic, based on reality and yet transcending it. It must flow naturally from my materials, from the way of the chisel and the way of the block. This is very difficult but it is the only way.” This is a goal I aspire to."
Merlyn was brought up in Hong Kong, returning to England to study Fine Art at Bath Academy of Art, under Adrian Heath in the 1960s. After obtaining a Dip Ed from Bath University, she lived, travelled and exhibited in Asia for many years, spending time in Bhutan, Kashmir, China and Thailand, followed by some years in Minnesota, USA. Always a painter, Merlyn began woodblock printmaking in 2000, studying at West Dean College, where she then taught short courses for 18 years.
Merlyn became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers in 2014, and is currently on the Council. She exhibits in the UK and internationally, and has regularly shown work in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. She founded the collaboration known as Pine Feroda, and has written two books with Rod Nelson, 'Making Woodblock Prints' (2015) and 'Twenty Concepts in Woodblock Printing' (2023).
A Summer Storm (woodcut, 60 x 41 cms unframed)
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