Harriet Merry | Willy Wonka, 2023

Etching - Framed Only - Please contact sales@woolwichprintfair.com to arrange delivery

30 x 21 cm

Edition of 25

Harriet Merry is a Midlands based collage artist and illustrator, who has recently started etching as a way to develop her many drawings. She has always drawn her kids; it’s an excellent way to practise drawing and capture fleeting moments. But in the past year she has succumbed to peri-menopausal insomnia and, because she usually has at least one child in her bed, started drawing her boys late at night whilst they sleep (with their permission) as a way to distract herself from anxiety. The Sleep Series etchings is a series in process combining these biro sketches of her two boys sleeping. They are not portraits, more a depiction of a child’s total abandonment to deep sleep using the delicate and introspective line of intaglio etching . As she creates them, she wonders what they see; whether the images of Marvel, Star Wars and Roald Dahl books on their duvets infiltrate their dreams. She imagines the colours from popular picture books they might dream in or whether they feel the darkness around them and likes to think that her presence, often depicted by a fragment of her own duvet, helps them have a calm and happy sleep.