Inspired by nature, travel and changing seasons, artist and printmaker, Sherrie-Leigh Jones, creates limited edition and original landscape prints, offering the viewer a sense of escapism, a transportation to a new place and a journey through imagined landscapes.
Mountainous landscapes and the romantic sublime also influence her work. Her recent prints have been inspired by the Japanese woodblock printmaking movement known as Shin-hanga (New prints), and Sansuiga (Japan) or Shanshui (China); paintings which depict an idealised landscape using the forms of mountains, rivers, clouds and mist.
To create her prints, Sherrie-Leigh assembles collages using her travel photographs and photos taken on walks in the English countryside, which are then combined with paintings and occasionally found imagery.
The collaged image is printed on a transparency and next Sherrie-Leigh coats a mesh screen with light sensitive emulsion, which is left to dry in a dark room. When dry, she exposes the image onto the screen using an exposure unit and UV light. The black parts of the image block out the light, meaning that the emulsion doesn’t harden on the darker parts of the image.
The screen is washed to remove any unexposed emulsion, leaving the image on the screen to be printed. Creating ink from paint and graphite powder Sherrie-Leigh then hand pulls a squeegee with a rubber blade to push the ink through the mesh on the areas of the exposed image onto paper to create the finished screenprint.
As Sherrie-Leigh says: “I repeat the process of hand pulling the ink through the screen multiple times on different sheets of paper to create an edition of prints. When an image has multiple colours or layers, I also repeat the process multiple times for each different part, and I register each element of the print every time with registration stops or acetate to ensure that it is printed in the same place on every print in the edition.”
Some prints are also created using the cellulose transfer printing technique, which isn’t a traditional printmaking technique but it can create prints with a similar appearance to etching.
Her new series of prints is inspired by the Japanese word, Komorebi, Komorebi, which is used to describe sunlight shining through trees. Gathering many photographs Sherrie-Leigh collaged new environments that celebrate the simplicity and joy that being in nature brings. The final artwork is printed on Japanese paper.
About Sherrie-Leigh Jones
Sherrie-Leigh Jones exhibits in the UK and Internationally, including the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2021. Her work is held in Jeremy Cooper’s Collection and private collections in the UK, France, Germany, Taiwan, New York and L.A.
In 2020, she was awarded an a-n Bursary: Time Space Money, supported by a-n The Artists Information Company and Arts Council England, and in 2018 was invited to be a part of Woolwich Contemporary Editions. In 2015, Jones was awarded a Print Futures Award and in 2013, her SS13 collaboration with fashion label, To Be Adored (tba), featured on the front cover of Grazia China.
