Jenny Hancock

An artist from the region, Jenny Hancock is a printmaker and painter living in rural Cheshire. Originally trained as a graphic artist, jenny now creates limited edition linocuts mostly using the traditional reduction technique and her work reflecting her love of plants, wildlife, gardens, landscape and the seasons.

Much of Jenny’s inspiration comes from her own garden and its visitors, the process involves initially working on pen and ink line drawings in her sketchbook which is then traced in reverse onto the lino. Colour choices are decided during the stages of the printing process as it progresses. The reduction technique uses one block of lino throughout - sections are carved away and a colour printed, further sections are then carved and another colour printed over the top of the first and so on. In this way layers of colour are built up only revealing the carved areas from the previous layer.

The lino is destroyed in the process which means that there is no going back or altering what has been done. Each layer of every print is hand-inked and printed onto the artist's etching press, resulting in slight variations between each print. There are also only a small number of prints produced in each edition as the nature of the technique means that the lino cannot sustain larger quantities of repeat printing.

There are between 8 - 12 layers of ink on each print using oil based ink on Somerset Printing Paper.