Desmond Healy is a painter and printmaker who lives and works in Woolwich, South East London. He studied fine art at Newcastle University and the Royal College of Art. His recent prints are developed from drawings made in London - On trains and in buses, cafes, hospitals, life rooms - notes made on the hoof of the people and places of the city that is his everyday experience. “The tired faces of travellers, lost in their thoughts at the end of the day - I could see them reading the bible or religious texts as the concrete and glass city passed by outside of the window. People sleeping, dreaming of Galilee or Jerusalem as they descended into sleep. The unpredictable alchemy of Intaglio printmaking seemed to be a perfect medium to explore this relationship between inner and outer life.” The plates go through many states, hard ground, aquatint, burnishing, rebiting - all the time looking for that moment when the flow of form and a sense of tangible mass seem to coincide. These etchings are part of an ongoing project to attempt to evoke different moments in the life of the city.
Desmond Healy is a painter and printmaker who lives and works in Woolwich, South East London. He studied fine art at Newcastle University and the Royal College of Art. His recent prints are developed from drawings made in London - On trains and in buses, cafes, hospitals, life rooms - notes made on the hoof of the people and places of the city that is his everyday experience. “The tired faces of travellers, lost in their thoughts at the end of the day - I could see them reading the bible or religious texts as the concrete and glass city passed by outside of the window. People sleeping, dreaming of Galilee or Jerusalem as they descended into sleep. The unpredictable alchemy of Intaglio printmaking seemed to be a perfect medium to explore this relationship between inner and outer life.” The plates go through many states, hard ground, aquatint, burnishing, rebiting - all the time looking for that moment when the flow of form and a sense of tangible mass seem to coincide. These etchings are part of an ongoing project to attempt to evoke different moments in the life of the city.