Grace Hailstone

Grace Hailstone is a printmaker who adopts an experimental approach to different forms of intaglio and relief printing.

Her largely abstract practice centres on an emotional response to landscape rather than any form of literal representation.
The work expresses a deep appreciation of nature, the volcanic landscape of Iceland being a main inspiration. Grace uses rocks as framing motifs, portals and thresholds through which we look. Yet the stillness they provide is an illusion. Her images simmer with the elemental ‘push and pull’ of Iceland’s isolated landscapes: ice storms, erupting volcanoes, boiling thermal waters, freezing lava. In doing this, she makes the ‘invisible visible’.

The layering process of Grace’s printmaking reflects her sensitivity to geological time, as she explores the feeling of time-travelling through this landscape, with millions of years of rock formation beneath her feet.

Working instinctively, but with a deep understanding of the history and practice of printmaking, she embraces the element of chance inherent in the medium, such as the unique ‘ghost images’ left by traces of ink when plates run through her press - an 18th century one owned previously by printmaker and painter Richard Bawden - are not wiped between prints.

She attributes that confidence to experiment to her mentor, Curwen Studio master printer Stanley Jones, who made prints for artists such as Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore.