Alice Leach article

Part of our field trip was to visit the Devon Guild of Craftsmen. Exhibiting at the time was an exhibition named Up-close. The basis of the exhibition was around printmaking and related artists across the UK, exploring all sorts of processes and methods in a solely 2D manner. Through this exhibition, I discovered a local artist named Alice Leach. What attracted me to her work were her sketchy style illustrations that featured smiley hyenas. Cutesy illustration seems to be all the rage at the moment; so finding another artist with this style really excited me. As I explored her work more, I discovered that these designs weren’t drawn, they were printed, using a method called collography. The way collography works is by building up layers of texture and engravings, and then sealed and inked up before being run through a press to transfer the ink to paper. The selection of prints come from a collection called Mr & Mrs Basic (and their pet hyena). My favourites from the collection, featured in the photograph are ‘I dream of a dark, stripy stranger’, ‘I met my love by the vast ocean’ and ‘We dined on zebra and leaves’; all of which feature these hyena characters. I love the way the pieces were created with the collagraph plate and how the texture of it is really prominent.

Alice Leach, based in Totnes, Devon, I discovered is a very experimental artist, not confining herself to a singular method or ‘genre’ of work. As I began researching her more and more for this project, I began discovering more and more quirks of her work that I found really appealing. Her work features sketchy, quirky illustrations and simple paintings teamed up with mixed media such as different materials, different printing methods, different design processes etc.

Alice Leach is the kind of artist that I would personally aspire to if I weren’t so heavily digitally based as a designer. She has an appealing unconventional nature of her work that makes her stand out amongst other pieces of work that I viewed at the gallery exhibition. She’s also inspired me to look into other methods of printing and experimenting more with hands on methods of designing and creating artwork which I think is something that could be really beneficial to my growth as a designer and artist. She also inspires me to draw and illustrate more and discover my personal style with drawing that I haven’t been able to find within my work so far.