Bewick’s Place – Winner of the New Light Printmakers’ Prize 2023

Multiple 16 block reduction relief engraving & woodcut
16cm x 32cm

Neil Bousfield RE works within the discipline of relief printmaking and contemporary wood engraving. He continues to make engravings which explore landscape narrative through the concept of place and place attachment. He was born in Middlesbrough, and grew up in the coastal village of Marske-by-the-Sea, and Redcar, in North Yorkshire.

Bousfield studied at Cleveland College of Art and Design, Middlesbrough, BA (Hons) Film & Animation at West Surrey College of Art and Design, and MSc CAGTA at Teesside University, Middlesbrough. More recently he studied at Bristol’s University of the West of England where he gained a Master of Arts degree in Multi-Disciplinary Printmaking, awarded with distinction.

Bousfield is an elected member of The Society of Wood Engravers and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers. His work is held in private and public collections. He now lives and works on the North Norfolk coast.

Bewick’s Place is a multiple block engraving and woodcut. The work comprises 16 small square blocks to represent a grid or a plotting and mapping method, which have been engraved, cut, and printed using the reduction method. Each block has been engraved in sections and printed as one.

Bewick’s Place looks at the idea of home and place from multiple perspectives. The work was inspired from a visit to Cherryburn, a small stone cottage and farmhouse in Mickley, Northumberland near the south bank of the River Tyne. It was the birthplace of Thomas Bewick (1753 – 1828) wood engraver and ornithologist. Cherryburn now houses a small museum devoted to Bewick’s life and works in the main house, and a printing shop in the barn.