Meet the Artist

Tessa has long been enchanted with making art. As a teenager, she was introduced to silkscreening and linocutting. The mere act of pulling one print or more off an inked plate and seeing the result was magical. After a long period of painting and drawing, she participated in workshops where she was reintroduced to printing methods such as etching, monotypes and collagraphs. Now she has an etching press of her own, and she experiments with a range of techniques: etching directly onto plexiglass, using cardboard, tin foil and embossing to obtain desired effects. Sometimes she also uses pencil crayons to hand colour the prints. Tessa's prints are derived from nature, her interest in psychology, and her own story. Figures in her art contain a variety of images and textures which highlight the permanent mark we leave on earth. Her work often results from a dialogue between different mediums, where one piece inspires the next. She looks to both the great masters and contemporary artists for inspiration, finding threads that connect across time.