Awareness Post: Gail Brodholt RE

Gail Brodholt RE is an artist born in South London, England, where she currently lives and works. She has a BA in Fine Art with a specialization in painting from Kingston University, but is also a leading contemporary linocut printmaker specializing in urban and industrial landscapes. She particularly focuses on London's transport infrastructure, which appealed to me because of my work's central themes of infrastructure. I was also drawn to her very strong black and white prints, which, similar to mine, do not have colors. However, I didn't know much about linocut, which is different from plexiglass because it involves carving away at linoleum in a negative process rather than a positive one.

Gail Brodholt RE, Going Underground II, 2020 Linocut, edition of 75 Image: 34 x 33 cm | Paper: Somerset 300gsm

One thing I found really impressive about Brodholt's work, especially in Going Underground II, above, was creating strong architectural forms with dramatic lighting, which I could try and employ in my own work as a method to create darker areas. Additionally, Brodholt's colored work in which she uses multiple blocks to get multiple colors was definitely interesting, although I'm not sure how that could work with my medium of plexiglass carving.

Gail Brodholt RE, Downtown Train II, 2021 Linocut, edition of 75 Image: 18 x 19.5 cm | Paper: Somerset 300gsm

Brodholt represents a growing trend in contemporary printmaking to return to traditional technioques like linocut, etching, and reflief printing. She chooses bold, modern subjects that depict industrial and urban landscapes, like Downtown Train II, above, putting a lens on the working-class environments and functional architecture as a subject of legitimate artistic expression. In my own work, I too share this fascination with industrial subjects, so I think her coverage of subjects like trains and subways definitely gave me some inspiration on what to cover in the future.