HILARY PAYNTER MBE
Awarded MBE for services to the Arts: 2023
Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, President: 2006–2011
Society of Wood Engravers, Chairman: 1999–2006; Exhibitions Secretary: 1980–present
Hon.RWS, Hon.RBSA, FRSA
Monograph Full Circle, with 600+ engravings, published in 2010
Born 1943, Dunfermline. NDD Portsmouth College of Art: Sculpture and Wood Engraving. London University: MA and MSC in Psychology. Parallel careers in wood engraving and Special Needs education for 30 years, full-time artist since 2000. Revived the then moribund Society of Wood Engravers in the early 1980s.
Collections
The V&A holds the largest collection of my work with over 70 wood engravings. Other collections include: Ashmolean Museum; Fitzwilliam Museum; Yale Collection of British Art; Laing Art Gallery, Hereford and Durham City Art Galleries; CAFA, Beijing; Heilongjiang Museum; Universities of London and Northumbria.
Interviewed by BBC for Woman’s Hour and Kaleidoscope, filmed by BBC for Off the Wall and We are (not) Amused.
Major public commissions in Newcastle: Central Station Metro and The Media Exchange. Arts Council commissioned touring solo: The Age of Enlightenment.
Solo Exhibitions
Bankside Gallery, London; Hereford City Art Gallery; Woodend Barn, Banchory; Durham City Art Gallery; Burton Art Gallery, Bideford; Dundee Printmakers; Edinburgh Printmakers; Zillah Bell, Thirsk; 20th Century Gallery, London; Art Matters, Tenby; Aberystwyth; Northern Print, Newcastle; Breaking Boundaries, London; Royal Birmingham Society of Artists.
Illustrated Books
Fragments from the Satyricon by Petronius; Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti. The Romantics in Wales, The Texture of the Universe and Castles and Princes published by Gwasg Gregynog. In Memory of Water, Waymarkings and Exit The Known World by Simon Armitage, Eight World’s Wives by Carol Ann Duffy, all published by Fine Press Poetry. The Hill in collaboration with Max Porter, published by Nomad Letterpress.
Background
Whilst at art college, I accidentally came across an exhibition of the Arthur Koestler Foundation and determined to teach art in prisons. After two years teaching art as a sculpture specialist in a big London comprehensive school, I then ran a special unit for adolescent boys who had been excluded for their difficult behaviour. But I realised they would never have ended up there if they had been helped adequately at school so I moved back into mainstream education, focusing on Special Needs. While I was teaching full-time with a young family, I pursued a degree in Psychology in the evenings over several years.
In the late 70s, wood engraving was in the doldrums and no longer taught in art schools. The Society of Wood Engravers had not managed an exhibition for a decade. Hoping to revive it in the early 1980s, I gleaned all the catalogues of the RA and RE for wood engravers and wrote to over 50 artists to test whether there was any interest or support for such a plan. The response was overwhelming. It took a couple of years to set up the first exhibition which was a clear success and as two other galleries wanted to take on the show, the idea of a touring annual exhibition was born and I have been responsible for it ever since.
For a while, the SWE was the main conduit of communication between wood engravers in the States and Canada until they set up their Wood Engravers Network. We have shared close, mutual ties ever since.
Selected Group Projects and Exhibitions
I have organised many other group projects including: Engraved Gardens published as a book and launched with an exhibition at the Museum of Garden History, then toured including Rosemoor RHS Garden in Devon; 500 Cats opened at Orleans House Gallery in Twickenham and toured to many other galleries around the country; Wood Engraving, an exhibition to celebrate wood engravers who were members of both the SWE and Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, held at Bankside Gallery in London; Wood Engraving as Illustration launched at the Ways with Words literary festival at Dartington Hall in Devon and The Millennium Ark featuring 26 SWE members.
Ways of Working
There is always an urgency in my work because of my commitments to the SWE and RE and I have developed rapid engraving techniques. Generally, I have several blocks in progress at any time and move between them. I enjoy the occasional constraints of working to a commission. I listen to Radio 4 or stories on tape while I work.
I always have more ideas than I can use and these range widely to include socio-political comment and landscape. I normally work directly onto end-grain wood with rudimentary drawings from ideas that I have been refining mentally and this allows development of the engraving on the block.
What is a wood engraving?
Wood engraving is a relief printing process characterised by fine line and texture. Cutting directly into the polished surface of end-grain wood: usually box or “lemon” with special tools, such as spitstickers and scorpers, that can cut a line finer than any pen or pencil could achieve. The print is made by rolling ink onto the engraved surface of the block. The parts that have been engraved do not receive ink and will therefore appear white. Paper is placed on the inked surface and the ink is transferred to the paper by press or hand-burnishing.
The engravings are in limited editions. Each print carries its own number and the number of the edition size: 2/50 means the second print in an edition of 50 prints. All the prints in an edition should be identical. Each print is individually numbered and signed by the artist.
