Felicity Warbrick
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Felicity Warbrick's work is inspired by the surroundings that fed her imagination as a child growing up and dwelling in the countryside on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales; bothies, barns and farms, den and treehouse building and spending most of her time outdoors observing nature.
Her move 5 years ago, to rural Shropshire after 18 years in London consolidated these feelings of a lifelong connection with wild landscape, its architecture, history and significance to her as a creative resource.
Inspiration also comes from found images captured while travelling through the landscape on train journeys, as well as an extensive collection of early souvenir travel books, discarded postcards, and photograph albums.
Felicity explores and develops ideas, feelings memories of these buildings/landscapes in sculpture (made of soap and bronze), drawing, painting, and drypoint. The soap acts as a counterpoint to her drawing in as much as it encourages her to describe space in a different way. For her, there is a clear relationship between these two mediums as each imposes a particular set of constraints that she enjoys working within. The monoprint drawing process only picks up a limited detail and the soap can only be carved to a certain thickness before it becomes too fragile to handle. -
The slow nature of Felicity’s drawing process and, similarly, that of the woodcuts and soap carvings, mirrors that of the making of the object itself. Each drawing is very labor-intensive, and the concentration required to make the thousands of tiny marks can be seen as an acknowledgment of the ingenuity of craftspeople both past and present. It's as if by isolating the object and re-imagining it in this hard-won way that Felicity is able to preserve for posterity the craft of its making.
To make a monotype drawing, Felicity must work in reverse. She lays down a thin layer of printing ink onto glass and then her paper on top before carefully drawing onto the back of the paper, producing an ink copy onto that paper that is a mirror of the final piece. It’s a process that can be tricky if too much ink is on the plate or it’s too wet etc so the element of surprise and the etched-like effect that can be produced is what keeps the method so interesting. Once the paper is lifted, the print side is displayed to the viewer, but the reverse original drawing (made in pencil and biro) remains a beautifully hidden reminder of the work involved. -
Felicity Warbrick was an exhibitor in the 2011 Jerwood Drawing Prize, wells art contemporary 2018 and at the RA summer show 2016 and 2019. She has shown with galleries in London, Edinburgh, and Hong Kong. Her artworks are held in private collections worldwide.
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Imprint is an exhibition that presents a lively conversation of original print from a selection of artists who approach techniques uniquely through their work. Felicity Warbrick presents a limited collection of monotype drawings created especially for the KMA show.
Each piece is an original drawing printed in ink on Japanese paper and demonstrates the complex nature of Felicity’s process and attention to detail. Works from several series feature.
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