Ian Brooks

Primarily a printmaker, Ian’s work is rooted in close observation of the landscape and a fascination with its small-scale details and textures. His work attempts to evoke the unique sense of place of a specific location.

Working primarily with the traditional techniques of sugar lift and spit-bite aquatint, the images are built up in layers of tightly-controlled drawing, and more abstract, semi-random marks which mimic the natural textures of the landscape. Ian finds a constant tension between his natural tendency towards realism and finely rendered detail, and a desire to simplify and abstract the image to achieve a looser rendering that maintains the energy of sketches made on location.

Etching in general, and aquatint in particular, can be rather mercurial processes. The acid bite is subject to a multitude of changeable factors only partly under the artist’s control. To make a successful print requires responding to the vagaries of the process, and ultimately leaving reference material, and sometimes the initial intention, behind, and following the needs of each particular image.

Drawn to remote, often quite bleak, landscape, Ian has drawn considerable inspiration from the polar landscapes in which he has worked for many years in his other life as an academic climate scientist.

Ian was awarded the New Light Printmaker’s Prize in 2020, the Original Print Prize at the ING Discerning Eye exhibition 2020, and the People’s Printmaker prize at the Flourish Award for Excellence in Printmaking exhibition, 2022.

Website: inkwyrm.com
Instagram: @ian_m_brooks
Email: ianbrooks.studio@gmail.com