Angie Lewin - Printmaker

Born: 1963
Place of Birth: Cheshire

Angie Lewin was born in Cheshire and studied BA(Hons) Fine Art Printmaking at Central St. Martins College of Art and Design between 1983 and 1986, followed by a year’s part-time postgraduate printmaking at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. After working in London as an illustrator she studied horticulture and then subsequently moved to Norfolk, which prompted a return to printmaking. Angie now mainly lives and works in Scotland.

Inspired by both the clifftops and saltmarshes of the North Norfolk coast and the Scottish Highlands, she depicts these contrasting environments and their native flora in wood engraving, linocut, silkscreen, lithograph and collage. These landscapes are often glimpsed through intricately detailed plant forms. Attracted to the relationships between plant communities on an intimate level, even the fine lines of insect eggs on a flower bud are observed in her work. Still lifes often incorporate seedpods, grasses, flints and dried seaweed collected on walking and sketching trips. A Wedgwood cup designed by Ravilious may contain feathers and seedheads. An anthology of garden writing published by Merrell, Garden Wisdom, is illustrated throughout by her prints, and author Leslie Geddes-Brown explains:

“The whole book was, in its turn, inspired by the art of Angie Lewin, who brings her own vision of the natural world to her work. She sees the beauty in all seasons and all manifestations of plants: the ordered pattern of the blooms, the thrusting energy of the emerging buds, the prolific seedheads and the varieties of shapes, colours and habits to be found in meadow and border.”

In 2010 Merrell published a monograph on my work, Angie Lewin - Plants and Places. As well as designing fabrics and stationery for St Jude’s, which Angie runs with her husband Simon, she has completed commissions for Penguin, Faber, Conran Octopus, Merrell and Picador and has also designed fabrics for Liberty.

In 2006 Angie was elected to The Royal Society of Painter Printmakers and in 2008 to The Society of Wood Engravers. In 2010 she was elected to The Art Workers Guild and in 2016 she was elected to The Royal Watercolour Society.

Selected commissions:
Fabric designs for St. Jude’s and Liberty of London. Book jacket designs for Faber & Faber, Conran Octopus, Penguin and Merrell.

Public collections include:
V&A London; The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; The London Institute; The University of Aberystwyth; Art for Hospitals and Hospices Collection