Amy Rose Hey

Amy Rose Hey is an illustrator and printmaker based in Kent, England. She specialises in oil painting, graphite pencil drawing and linocut printing and takes inspiration from her love of British wildlife, folklore, and women’s history.

Whilst studying for a BA Hons in Fine Art Painting at Wimbledon College of Art UAL, her studies in painting encouraged her love for fine detail and an intricate, botanical style of artwork to develop. Although she studied painting at university, Amy is a self taught printmaker. She fell in love with printmaking and more traditional crafts, specifically linocut printing, around a year ago; “I love how the medium allows me to explore my ideas and illustrative style, and there’s always more to learn“.

Amy’s linocut prints are influenced by her experiences of growing up in the countryside of South East England, and importantly the folklore and stories behind it. Surrounded by marshlands, rivers, lakes and the nearby rocky coast, she creates artworks entwined with tales of sea creatures, fairies, stone circles, witches and woodland animals. “I’m always collecting interestingly patterned rocks, searching for fossils on the beach, picking up feathers, hunting mushrooms or pressing flowers, all of which provide constant inspiration for the subjects and motifs in my prints” explains the printmaker.

This summer, Amy purchased a small antique etching press. She took on the task of refurbishing it, and now uses it to press all of her prints; “I’m still learning all of it’s little quirks… I love to think about how much artwork has been made with it, and how many hands have turned the wheel throughout its lifetime“. Amy’s press lives in her workshop at the bottom of her garden, where she can enjoy the wildlife and changing seasons whilst she works.

Using traditional oil based relief inks to press her prints, Amy enjoys how the process is much slower than pressing with water soluble inks; “Mixing the colours, adding cobalt dryers or retardants to slow down or speed up the drying time, and learning how much to add of each component has an almost alchemical feeling“.

Amy is currently working on a series of detailed linocut prints of England’s sacred stone circles, and is embracing the challenges of capturing the textures of stone in lino. She concludes; “I feel like I’m now at a very exciting stage of my printmaking career and I’m looking forward to taking part in more art markets and print fairs in the near future“.

www.amyhey.co.uk
@amyrose.art

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