Hetty Haxworth
Hetty’s work has frequently explored the movement of light across land and water, paring visual material down to its essence. These exhibits, however, demonstrate a similar approach to interior spaces, capturing the transient quality of moments of colour, light, movement and shadow.
Whilst the outcomes of Hetty’s work are abstract, they all begin with observation from her environment, whether outside or inside. In this exhibition, the images originated from the play of light on interior walls: shapes were captured and recreated as pendants on a mobile, and in turn, the movement and dance of light and shadow within, and around, the mobile were explored in colour and texture, leading to the abstract results.
As a printmaker, Hetty has utilised screenprint, wood cut, etching and drypoint for editioned work. In addition to these approaches, she is increasingly drawn to creating single artworks through monoprint: the luminous colour of the oil-based inks she uses in this medium, together with the potential they allow for generating highly textured areas, using rollers rather than brush work, create a freedom and painterly quality in these exhibits.
Hetty grew up in Oxford. She graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1993 and has exhibited her prints extensively in the UK and abroad for the past 30 years, as well as receiving numerous commissions. Her work has frequently been selected for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, The Scottish Society of Artists and various touring shows in Ohio, Australia, LA, Denmark and Brussels. She now lives and works from her studio in Fettercairn, in rural Aberdeenshire, and makes her prints at the DCA (Dundee Contemporary Arts) print studio.