Emerging from the night: a conversation with artist Sarah Gillespie. Luminous, velvety, miraculously detailed, Moths – a series of mezzotints created by artist Sarah Gillespie – invites the viewer to contemplate the mystery of these winged night creatures. We chat with Sarah about how moths captured her fascination after a lifetime of painting landscapes,... Read more »
“Why moths?” is a question Devon mezzotint printmaker Sarah Gillespie is used to answering – being sympathetic to the animals and their status. “They’re misunderstood, overlooked and deeply unloved by most humans,” she says. “I wasn’t looking for moths when I started drawing them around ten years ago – they came and found me. Their... Read more »
After rain, the garden outside Sarah Gillespie’s studio is busy and brilliant. Green nches are loud in the darker green of an apple tree. Clustered at the window, tomatoes, rain-enamelled, hang heavy and glamorous as pomegranates. Inside, propped on a mammoth Victorian easel, a parallel world is presented in black and white. Deep Lane is... Read more »
What lies at the heart of Sarah Gillespie’s practice as an artist is a deep concern for the natural environment. She has an enduring love affair with the rural world that surrounds her. Trained as a painter in Paris and the Ruskin in Oxford she has nevertheless been working in black and white, predominately charcoal,... Read more »
In separate conversations about art and landscape with two different friends, neither of whom knows the other, both encouraged me to seek out charcoal drawings by Sarah Gillespie. When I asked what it was that most appealed to them about her work, they paused amid the tumble of enthusiastic praise for her technical skill, her... Read more »
Homage, Admiration, Dwelling and the Web of Change Peter Reason visits the studios of two artists working with environmental themes. Look at this moth… No, No! I mean really look, look at the shading on the wings, the delicacy of the veins, the patterning of hairs on the antennae. Look at the way this wing... Read more »
