Anna Ólafsson is an artist with a dual nationality, British and Icelandic. She is the first of the two young artists under thirty who will attend the residence this year and who will receive free residency assistance, although for her training in electro-etching she received extra funding from The Hope Scott Trust, Murray Beith Murray Solicitors, based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
In spite of her youth Anna has great experience in the field of traditional etching. She started making etchings in secondary school with the Scottish artist Alasdair McMorrine at the age of 13. Now she is 25, but her experience is extensive and she has remarkable style and concentration for her youth. She is a Fine Art (2015) and MFA Art and Humanities (2016) graduate from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee, UK.
However Anna Ólafsson is not only an expert and passionate printmaker, she is musician who plays Scottish folk music on the fiddle, and she is also an experienced performance artist.
During her stay she has made some exquisite etchings because in her drawing style the delicate line plays a very important role and the electrolytic etching is ideal for this kind of drawing. She made electro-etching lines on hard ground and open bite electrotint for tonal areas. She has also tried electro-etching with graphite ink resist to draw lines as a hard ground and to produce grey tones of different intensities by diluting the varnish. She worked semi-dry electro-etching, and passive electro-etching (without electricity) on zinc plates getting deep bites for embossing and she also worked galvanized lines on copper plates.
I hope that the experience gained in the processes of electro-etching, safer for printmakers and the environment, will be useful to introduce into the secondary schools where she plans to teach in the future.
Pictures from the workshop
Anna Ólafsson speaks about her experience in the workshop-residency
It was a real privilege to work with Alfonso in his beautiful studio. I have learnt a great deal in such a short space of time, and I am pleased with the results of our experiments with electro-etching. I believe that the quality of line you can achieve with this process is perhaps even greater than that of traditional etching techniques, with results more predictable. Amparo and Alfonso have made a fantastic place here to live, work and be inspired, and I know that the things that I have learnt here will influence my artwork for years to come. I hope to refine my skills in and experiment further with safe etching techniques, and I will teach these methods to my students. Alfonso is an innovative artist and scientist, with such enthusiasm for his work. I enjoyed seeing his excitement at each plate and print we made, despite his many years working with and teaching these methods. The time went so quickly and I was sad to leave on the final morning, having been printing and making plates until 9pm the night before. I hope to very soon set up my own studio with electro-etching equipment, and continue to make strange and delightful works in print!
Anna Ólafsson's electro-etchings
More information about Anna Ólafsson.