Artworks

Anne Desmet specialises in prints and collages of real and imagined or metamorphosing buildings. This engraving is a development of one of six monochrome engravings that Anne was commissioned to make by London’s Lincoln’s Inn to celebrate its 600th anniversary in 2022, and focusses on doorways and archways across its site. This print is a new version of one of those blocks showing a detail of the Inn’s so-called ‘Stone Buildings’, constructed from 1774-80. They comprise part of a Grade I listed building faced with Portland stone.

The engraved block is printed in mid-grey to suggest the pale stonework and layers of colour and tone are added to recreate the location’s sunlight and shadows, using five separate stencils through which the artist applied each hue.

Since 2018, Anne has been an elected Honorary Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford University, for ‘distinction in the world of art’. She is only the third wood engraver ever elected to membership of the Royal Academy of Arts (RA) in its 255-year history. She has won over 40 national and international awards including a Rome Scholarship in Printmaking and has works in major public collections worldwide. She has had over 50 solo shows including seven in UK museums including the Ashmolean, the Whitworth and, most recently at Pallant House Gallery (2022-23).