Merlyn Chesterman RE

MERLYN CHESTERMAN RE is a woodblock printmaker living on the North Devon coast. Her work explores the natural world around her, particularly the sea, waves, the weather, windblown trees and grasses. She incorporates the texture of her wooden blocks in a process that seems as natural as her subject matter, producing prints that are filled with the patterns, rhythms and soft colours of nature.

Merlyn Chesterman was born in England, and grew up in Hong Kong, returning to England to study Fine Art at Bath Academy of Art, Corsham, where she obtained a BA, and at Bath University a Dip Ed. She furthered her studies in China, at Guanlan Print Base in Guangdong Province, and at the Purple Bamboo Studio, Hangzhou. Merlyn is on the Council of the Royal Society of Painter- Printmakers and has written two books about woodblock printmaking with her colleague Rod Nelson ARE, Making Woodblock Prints and Twenty Concepts in Woodblock Printing, both published by Crowood Press and available at the exhibition. She has exhibited widely throughout the world and her work is in many collections in Hong Kong and Bhutan as well as the V&A Museum, the Ashmolean Museum and the Edward James Foundation at West Dean College, Chichester, where she taught on the Short Course Programme for twenty years.