Meet The Artist
Laura Boswell
My current work is essentially concerned with locality and landscape. I work as a printmaker using reduction cut lino. My concern is to unpick the landscape and search within it for essential form and shape, documenting the impact of agriculture, man’s tracks and patterns on the land.
I had a long break from printing while raising a child. During those years I quilted and worked in wool, designing and hand stitching image based quilts using symbols, fruits and flowers. My knitting work was based around Fairisle, revisiting traditional design with my own iconography and colour. Later my quilting became small textile landscapes using stitch shape and found objects. Returning to printmaking, I took the strong elements of pattern and texture from my textile work and applied it to my printmaking. Essentially my practise is still to piece quilts, but using field forms instead of cut fabric.
I actively look for pattern through seasonality and form, colour and light. I am delighted by patterns in the landscape: orchards, plough lines, sheep tracks, by the small and commonplace and by the changes of the seasons. I try to evoke the essential feel of landscape in an inclusive way, while retaining a personal austerity and simplicity of composition and colour. I hope to engage the viewer with an alternative view of their everyday surroundings, a gentle encouragement away from the literal.
C.V.
Education
1984 – 1987 University of Wales, Aberystwyth
BA (hons) Visual Arts and Art History 2:1
1983 – 1984 Harrow College of Higher Education
Arts Foundation Diploma
Printmaking
I returned to printmaking four years ago after a career as an archivist and later a partner establishing and running a photographic library. I specialise in linocut using reduction cut to create colour landscapes, focussing on seasonality and my local area.
Consultancy: Arts Coordinator
I am currently working with local government as an arts consultant, acting as coordinator for a non-profit making project called Art Works for Business. This aims to bring together local artists with local business in working partnerships across Buckinghamshire. Responsibilities include co-writing a website to facilitate this (www.bucksinfo.net/artworksforbusiness/).
Exhibitions
2008 Open Studios and Workshops Artist’s own Studio
2008 British Printmakers Obsidian Gallery
2008 Artworks for Business Solo Show Obsidian Gallery
2007 Visions of Buckinghamshire Buckinghamshire County Museum
2007 Eight Printmakers Buckinghamshire County Museum
2007 Autumn Obsidian Gallery
2007 Buckinghamshire landscape Obsidian Gallery
Artist Talks
2008 Aylesbury Public Art Project Aylesbury Vale Arts Council
2007 Visiting Artist Cottesloe School
Public Art Commissions
Aylesbury Transport Hub
Commissioned 2006 to design a series of landscapes working by hand in vitreous enamel to line the length of a covered road in Aylesbury town centre. Total length of both images 160m by 5m high. Commissioned 2007 to produce final designs. Currently in production over 2008-2009. Installation begins January 2009. The work also includes laser cut stainless steel designs for use over ventilation panels throughout the project.
Vale Park
Commissioned 2006 to develop ideas for artworks suitable for the restoration Vale Park Aylesbury. Spring 2007 designs approved for five Corten steel screens, curved and laser cut, based on field shapes and pollard willow forms. Designs approved, funding pending.
Banbury Planters Project
Commissioned 2006 to design three bas reliefs for 42 lead planters for the public areas in Banbury.
Workshops and Collaborations
Ongoing Workshops
One to one workshops between the artist and interested members of the public and fellow artists at the artist’s studio.
2008 Artworks For Business
Two open workshops to demonstrate linocut printmaking as part of my solo show.
2007 Eight Printmakers
A collaboration of eight contemporary printmakers to produce an edition of thirteen folios of prints for Bucks County Museum, working in conjunction with the museum's exhibition 'Clear skies and Storm Clouds' an exhibition of historic British printmakers.
2007 Park-ive Weekend
Workshops in collaboration with a felt maker and illustrator to work with the public using simple printmaking and other techniques to create a series of three hangings as a memory archive of Vale Park.
2007 Art in the Park 2
An open air workshop with two other artists inviting the public to engage with art in Vale Park. Using two tennis courts, the public were asked to make shadow pictures by spray painting around other people's shadows to form ghost images.
2007 Art in the Park 1
A workshop with local people in collaboration with Queens Park Arts Centre to explore ideas about Vale Park and the function of public art through spoken and written work, drawing and design.
2007 Obsidian Craft Weekend
A weekend of exhibitions and demonstrations including printmaking workshops.
May 2009 RECENT NEWS
Laura Boswell: Nagasawa Art Park – Artist in residence programme
I am a printmaker based in North Bucks. I work almost exclusively in lino, making colour reduction prints. A couple of years ago a letterpress printer suggested to me that I apply for the Nagasawa programme: a two month residency at an arts centre the mountains near Osaka to learn traditional Japanese woodblock printing. It all sounded far too good to be true so I applied last year and made the short list. This year I am delighted and amazed to have been selected. The selectors have chosen six artists from around the world and I will be working alongside an Irishman, an American, a German, an Indonesian and an Italian. I am sure there’s a joke in there somewhere…
I focus mainly on landscape and locality, looking for shape and pattern in agricultural land, weather and season. I will be learning to work with water based inks in Japan and hope that this will help me to widen the scope of my work. I have just completed a major public art project, hand painting in vitreous enamel, and this has made me far more painterly in my approach to my linocuts, using dabs and mixes of colour on the block as I print. I hope that learning to work with more translucent inks will help me to be more delicate and flexible. I’ve also been lucky enough to buy a bigger Albion recently which will take me from 11”x14” to broadsheet size prints (if we can get it across our garden and into my studio next week!).
I keep a blog and will be writing up my experiences in Japan. You can link through to the blog, have a look at my work and say hello if you fancy through my web sitewww.lauraboswell.co.uk. The details of the Japanese residency are to be found at www.endeavor.or.jp/nap