-
Norman has mastered and indeed invented so many of the remarkable and often very time consuming methods of creating different effects with etching; wielding them to recreate the landscapes he visits, from the subtle glints of dawn light; raging seas crashing against monumental, guano encrusted rocks; sweeping landscapes with delicate grasses which seem to sway on the page before us; dappled sunlight inviting us down quiet paths; and birds hovering, birds diving and swooping, soaring, plunging... every considered mark used to capture these moments of beauty made possible through different etching techniques.
-
Norman is always most animated when he talks about etching: the different methods of creating varied effects and how important it is to enthuse young artists to learn this printmaking technique. Norman is clearly intrigued with how each etching brings something new and individual despite having made so many etchings in his career and returning to the medium day after day. With each new work, Norman teases, pushes and battles with the tools of the art: carefully selecting the most appropriate etching plates, needles, brushes, the acids, papers, aquatints, the inks, and from all the other oils, powders, abrasives, modifiers, varnishes and bottles of mysterious elements accumulated after so many years of working with etching to create the incredible works of art which finally leave his studio for us to enjoy.
-
Norman Ackroyd - Film Screening and Collectors' Q&A
Watch a recording of Norman Ackroyd discussing etching and his current exhibition with Vincent Eames.
-
The Infernal Method 2021 Boxed Set
The ten etchings from this portfolio are available individually as seen below or as the complete boxed set.-
Norman AckroydSkellig Michael, 2021£540.00
-
Norman AckroydCastle of Mey, 2021£540.00
-
Norman AckroydPabbay, 2021£540.00
-
Norman AckroydBurra Firth, 2021£540.00
-
Norman AckroydAilsa Craig, 2021£540.00
-
Norman AckroydSula from Rona, 2021£540.00
-
Norman AckroydMcCarthy's Castle, 2021£540.00
-
Norman AckroydDursey Head, 2021£540.00
-
Norman AckroydLittle Skellig, 2021£540.00
-
Norman AckroydHood Hill, 2021£540.00
-
-
Watercolours
-
Norman AckroydLittle Skellig, 2015£3,600.00
-
Norman AckroydDursey Island, 2015Sold
-
Norman AckroydPig Island 18/7/13, 2013£3,600.00
-
Norman AckroydThe Stags of Broadhaven, 2013£3,600.00
-
Norman AckroydDonegal Bay, 2013£3,600.00
-
Norman AckroydThe Sturrall, 2021£3,600.00
-
Norman AckroydMacDara's Island, 2017Sold
-
Norman AckroydTor Rocks, 2021Sold
-
Norman AckroydInishmurray, 2021£3,600.00
-
Norman AckroydStudy of Sunlight Co. Galway, 2012Sold
-
-
Littoral 2022 Boxed Set Preview
We are delighted to launch these four etchings from Norman's forthcoming boxed set. Littoral will be published in 2022; these four etchings are available now with Eames Fine Art. -
-
Norman AckroydBarden Fell, 2021£540.00
-
Norman AckroydStriding Edge, Wharfedale, 2021£540.00
-
Norman AckroydSun & Rain, St. Kilda, 2021£960.00
-
Norman AckroydSaddle Head Achill Island Co.Mayo, 2020
-
Norman AckroydSouthwold from Blythburgh, 2021£600.00
-
Norman AckroydSlievemore from Blacksod Bay, 2021£600.00
-
-
-
Norman AckroydCroaghaun Cliffs - Achill Head - Co. Mayo, 2020£1,200.00
-
Norman AckroydDonegal from Downpatrick Head, 1994Sold
-
Norman AckroydSun & Mist- Downpatrick Head - Co Mayo, 2014£1,200.00
-
Norman AckroydJanuary Sunrise, Ludlow, Dinham Weir, 2003£960.00
-
Norman AckroydInishtearaght, 1989£960.00
-
Norman AckroydFrom Slea Head - The Great Blasket, 2000£960.00
-
Norman AckroydNorthern Landscape III, 1999Sold
-
Norman AckroydAutumn Sunrise - Windermere, 1998£1,500.00
-
Norman AckroydJanuary Afternoon - Wiltshire, 1989£960.00
-
Norman AckroydWindrush Cornfield, 1985£960.00
-
Norman AckroydThe Infernal Method, 2017£600.00
-
Norman AckroydBalmoral Castle, 2002£540.00
-
Norman AckroydThimbleby in Winter, 1996£3,250.00
-
-
The Infernal Method
Essay by Luke Wallis from the exhibition catalogueIt is easy to reach for the imagery of alchemy to describe the printmaking process of etching, and descending into Norman Ackroyd’s print studio, one is tempted to compare it to the laboratory of an alchemist. To someone who is not themselves a printmaker, the various techniques that Norman employs in his printmaking can seem esoteric: aquatint, sugar lift, spit bite. There are solutions to be mixed, some of which contain corrosive substances, and, of course, this is the site of a kind of transubstantiation of metals – not into gold, but certainly into images that are as equally refined as that most precious of elements.
However, it would be entirely inaccurate to characterise the man to whom this workshop belongs as a beard-stroking mystic. The last tannery closed just ten years before Norman established his studio here in Southwark in 1983, and the street names in the immediate vicinity (Tanner, Leathermarket, Morocco) still bear witness to the prevalence that industry once enjoyed in the area. Like a tannery, Norman’s studio, ink-soaked and occupied by imposing machines which have remained essentially unchanged for half a millennium, is also a site of graft. There is a kind of paradox at play, which is fitting when one considers the artwork on display in The Infernal Method, especially the newer work, possessing as it does a delicacy quite at odds to the violence inherent not just in its subject matter, but in the very process by which it is produced.
-
The title of the exhibition comes from William Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell, in which the poet-artist pairs his own prints and philosophy to explore another paradoxical coupling, namely that of which Blake terms Reason (the domain of heaven) and Energy (belonging to hell). It is a concept at the very heart of Norman’s own method.
For all his technical mastery and virtuosity in the handling of his materials, this method begins far from the studio, most usually in a boat, miles and miles from the mainland, whether that land be Ireland or the northern coast of Britain. It is the most remote parts of the United Kingdom, the islands and sea stacks that jut defiantly out of the Atlantic, that have occupied Norman’s imagination for the best part of half a century, and to which he returns year after year.
-
One benefit of this continued interest is an encyclopaedic knowledge of these archipelagos. He can speak at length, for example, about St Kilda, to which the towering stacks of Stac an Armin and Stac Lee, which feature twice in the exhibition, belong. He speaks of it as a kind of utopia during the 4,000 years it was inhabited, too remote for money to have found it out, the United Kingdom’s very own Galapagos, possessing its own species of tern and dormouse, a unique breed of sheep. Even the people, he says, evolved differently, with prehensile feet to facilitate climbing the stacks to harvest gannet chicks.
-
Then came the Victorian tourists, in their steamers, with their corrupting money, desirous, as Norman puts it, to see the heathens for themselves. It is a pertinent choice of word, for the utopian image he conjures up sits in stark contrast to many of the images he produces. The archipelagos are, after all, the result of volcanic activity, molten lava erupting up from below, eventually forming granite, a stone so solid even the roiling Atlantic cannot wash it away. To this day, when you approach them, with the gannets, six-foot in wingspan, screaming, shooting down out of the sky like arrows, and the stench, of the guano and the rotting fish, and the sea spray, there remains, he admits, something infernal to this part of the world. Of course, some of these elements are by necessity not present in Norman’s prints. It is not reality which we are being presented with; for all his extensive knowledge, Norman’s work goes beyond the merely factual. It is for this reason that he studiously avoids using cameras, relying exclusively on the sketches and watercolours (examples of which are included in this exhibition) that he executes from the boat when he is before his subjects. Although it is not quite true to say that these notebooks, decades-worth of which sit in his studio, are his only resources. Just as the St Kildans evolved to suit their environment, Norman, too, has evolved, so that when he is producing these watercolours, he is not simply recording what he sees, as would a camera, rather he is creating a direct link between his subject and his artistic process, etching, as it were, the image into himself. Thus, even when not permitted to circumnavigate the islands, Norman is able to produce new work, as demonstrated by his most recent boxed set, work which is as full of vigour and atmosphere as anything he has hitherto produced.
- Luke Wallis, from the catalogue to 'The Infernal Method', September 2021
Please click HERE to view and purchase the exhibition catalogue.
Norman Ackroyd | The Infernal Method
Past viewing_room