menagerie

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by Melanie Wickham

24th August - 8th September

“My work is mainly based on the natural world, but often with a humorous element. My childhood was spent living on a smallholding in the Cotswolds and 4 generations of my family live in the Welsh hills in Powys. This over-exposure to nature and the elements has had a profound influence on me!! I find it very difficult to make any art works that are not filled with animals.
"I like to create images that make me smile - and hopefully viewers will do so too. The images are black and white lino prints in limited editions and are handprinted using a boxwood burnishing tool on Somerset Satin paper. I enjoy pushing the limitations of lino printing as a technique, and creating an image with a 'drawn' feel to it is something I often aim for. The strong contrast that black and white provides can mean that the images are very striking as subtlety is not usually associated with lino prints. The quality of line produced using this technique is something that I particularly like and I feel it lends itself well to my images that are influenced by my training in illustration.”

Melanie was trained at the University of West England in Bristol, and studied a post-graduate arts management course at the University of Sussex in Brighton. Her work has been widely exhibited and in collections at the Museum of Modern Art and the Public Library in New York.