Guy Allen brings a modern eye to one of the oldest crafts there is: drawing. His subjects are the animals and birds of the Norfolk countryside he grew up in, etched with a warmth the medium does not always allow and then lifted with hand-applied 24-carat gold leaf.
He works without photographs, drawing straight through a resin resist onto copper and zinc with an etching needle. The plates are bitten in acid, inked by hand and pressed on an old intaglio press, and he moves between etching, aquatint, screen printing and lithography so that each brings its own texture.
Allen studied at Central Saint Martins and won the Diana Brooks Prize at the Mall Galleries in 2018. He has shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, and his work hangs at Holkham Hall in the collection of the Earl and Countess of Leicester.
