Anne Desmet's Choice: Prints by Royal Academicians
Norman Ackroyd RA • Anne Desmet RA • Chris Orr RA • Rebecca Salter PRA • Emma Stibbon RA
“I am delighted to have this opportunity to show with a select group of Royal Academician printmakers whose work I esteem highly. As with any group exhibition, it is always intriguing to note the threads that connect the work. Each artist who I have invited to join me in this exhibition at Kevis House Gallery is a printmaker of high renown in at least one technique.”
Anne Desmet RA
See a short video tour of the exhibition below
“We are all artists with a clear-eyed vision of what we want to create and highly specialised technical abilities with which to do it. The work of all five of us has roots in drawing and painting.
A sense of intense observation connects our works too - whether it’s Norman's grey mountains looming from sea-mists, Emma’s intensely contrasted white ice and black seas, Chris’s people and places throbbing with life, my own intense studies of light and how it falls on buildings and other objects, or Rebecca’s equally meticulously observed studies of light and dark tones.
Whilst representational in subject matter, Norman’s etchings are a pure symphony in grey tones - linking them closely with Rebecca’s more abstract works.
Emma’s landscapes share with Norman's a sense of extreme weather and the joy of an outdoor adventure yet, visually, they perhaps have more in common with my works with which they share a sense of the dramatic and theatrical use of light and dark tones and a rigorous specificity of drawing.
Chris Orr’s work relates to mine in its undisguised love of representational drawing and of small details which make for prints that you can keep looking at for years and constantly find new surprises.”
Anne Desmet RA
Norman Ackroyd RA
Anne Desmet RA
Wood engraving
2020. Edition size: 45
30 x 25 cm (image) 52.5 x 46 cm (frame)
Commissioned by Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collections Library
Wood engraving and stencil on Gampi Vellum paper
2014. Edition size: 30
22.5 x 17.3 cm (image). 39 x 27.5 cm (frame)
Wood engraving and stencil on Gampi Vellum paper
2014. Edition size: 30
22.5 x 17.3 cm (image) 39 x 27.5 cm (frame)
Wood engraving and stencil and monotype on Gampi Vellum paper
Edition size: 30
22.5 x 17.3 cm (image) 39 x 27.5 cm (frame)
Wood engraving on Gampi Vellum paper
2014. Edition size: 30
22.5 x 17.3 cm (image) 39 x 27.5 cm (frame)
Wood engraving on Gampi Vellum paper
Edition size: 30
22.5 x 17.3 cm (image). 39 x 27.5 cm cm (frame)
Wood engraving
2016. Edition size: 25
12 x 16 cm (image) 32 x 37 cm (frame)
A view of the art campus of Eton College
Wood engraving
2016. Edition of 30
14 x 11.5 cm (image) 30 x 28 cm (frame)
A view of Eton College Library
Wood engraving
2016. Edition size: 30
13 x 10.8 cm (image) 35 x 27 cm (frame)
A composite image of Tudor chimneys at Eton College
Chris Orr RA
Book. 26 × 26 cm. 160 pages with 130 illustrations
2025
Chris Orr takes us on a tour of his prodigious and penetrating vision of the world over the last twelve years.
Book
2013
238pp
Illustrated with over 150 of Chris Orr’s theatrical, witty and wilfully allusive prints, this book was the first in depth look at the gloriously original output of a ceaseless inventor.
Lithograph. 2020
Edition of 35
THIS IS THE LAST PRINT OF THE EDITION
101 x 70 cm
As relevant today as it was in 2020 when it was created!
Engraving with hand colouring
Edition of 20
2025
61 x 64 cm (image)
RA Summer Exhibition 2025
More by Chris Orr
Watercolour and pencil
42 x 28 cm (image) 51 x 38 cm (frame)
Framed
Created for Chichester Festival Theatre's Nest Appeal, 2024
Rebecca Salter PRA
Emma Stibbon RA
Etching
2012
Edition size: 90
10.5 x 21 cm (image) 29.5 x 38.5cm (frame)
More by Norman Ackroyd