exhibitions & events 2024

Zoë Kean

Elements

Glasgow Print Studio is delighted to present a solo exhibition from Glasgow based painter-printmaker, Zoë Kean.

This exhibition is inspired by the artist's travels around the West Coast of Scotland by land and by sea.

“I wanted to explore the constantly changing nature of this challenging and fragile environment, capturing textures, colours and movement, as well as contrasting the delicate vulnerability of some of its elements, with the harsh, unrelenting, seasonal forces at work.

A small wind-sculpted Scots Pine clinging defiantly to life on a rocky headland, a weathered, sun-bleached lump of driftwood tossed upon the shore during a storm, or the shocking magenta splash of a foxglove, gracefully holding its own against an incoming Westerly, are some of the things that have caught my attention.”

For this new body of work, Kean has employed a number of different etching techniques to achieve a wide variety of marks and effects. Utilising  soft ground, hard ground, soap ground, aquatint and sugarlift, she has allowed the images to develop in a responsive and painterly fashion.

“Etching could be said to encompass the four traditional elements, air, water, fire and earth. Like nature, it is a fascinating combination of total control and baffling unpredictability, with endless variables at play, and arguably lends itself to the subject matter I have chosen here.”

Nature and the geological and social history of the Scottish landscape are often the focus of Kean's artwork, who enjoys creating work through drawing, painting and a variety of printmaking techniques, including etching, monoprint, collagraphy and linocut.

Kean creates bold, textural work which suggests the constantly evolving, multi-layered nature of the environments in which we inhabit and influence. Her work explores how humanity leaves its mark on the land and how it has shaped us.

Zoë Kean graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2006, with B.A.Hons.Sculpture. Shortly afterwards Kean undertook an introductory etching course at GPS and has been developing her love of this medium ever since.

Image: Zoë Kean, 'Shoreline', 2024, etching, 51 x 40 cm, edition of 20.