Mary Eynon

Interdisciplinary Artist and Maker

Norman Ackroyd

Norman Ackroyd

At the moment Norman Aykroyd is one of my favourite artists and I am obsessed in how he creates such wonderful prints. I know he has been practicing for many years but I am still fascinated in how he captures such beauty, emotions and solitude in is work.

Aerial shots are dramatic, but they’re not what I want,” he says. “Take, for example, the St Kildans, before they were evacuated. The abstract shapes of that landscape were the background to their lives, they understood it completely, it formed the essence of the environment they lived in and carved their homes from, and it’s that feeling of place that I’m trying to communicate.” There are no figures in his work, but there is wildlife in great, whirling abundance. He says “I don’t have any grand plan; I just go where instinct takes me” His work almost never includes the human figure, the landscape subjects are often of old human habitation.

His prints range from tiny etchings intended to be bound into books to huge etchings. His preferred medium for working directly on paper is watercolour, including a recent project pairing his watercolours with poems by Kevin Crossley-Holland, published under the title Moored Man. This has given me the idea to use text in my own work, perhaps a poem or writing alongside the prints or printing the text as a print.

He paints directly onto a wax-covered copper sheet, opening up spaces with a sugar lift, into which a later bath of acid will ‘bite’. It’s into these gaps that the printers’ ink will eventually settle, before being pressed against a page.

The soft, almost watercolour-like quality that Ackroyd achieves in the finished article comes from an ‘aquatint’, a cloud of fine resin that settles onto the plate and adheres to create a ‘wash’ that will layer the image with atmospheric tone. Unfortunately I cannot do this where I am so I will have to find another way to achieve such effects.

For me I wish to try capture the elegant ink wash look that Ackroyd can so easily achieve, as well as the perfect locations and all the feeling and emotions the places carry with them.

157 thoughts on “Norman Ackroyd”

  22. I don’t think the title of your article matches the content lol. Just kidding, mainly because I had some doubts after reading the article.

  23. Thank you for your sharing. I am worried that I lack creative ideas. It is your article that makes me full of hope. Thank you. But, I have a question, can you help me?

  24. I don’t think the title of your article matches the content lol. Just kidding, mainly because I had some doubts after reading the article.

  153. Thank you for your sharing. I am worried that I lack creative ideas. It is your article that makes me full of hope. Thank you. But, I have a question, can you help me?

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