Joan Mullarvey’s work sits between painting and printmaking, creating bold and distinctive works on paper that take inspiration from her local environment. Interested in form and structure, Mullarvey often shifts the perspective, recreating a scene using observational drawing, texture, shape and repetition to create a sense of place and space.
Hints of the Valley brings together a series of works using the printmaking process of collagraphy; a technique she is particularly drawn to, where textural collaged plates are created then inked in a painterly approach. Each print is a hand-pulled original artwork, created through a lengthy process ending with the magical moment when the paper is finally lifted from the matrix.
Joan Mullarvey, Autumn fields, detail, 2023,collagraph on Somerset, 15 x 15cm.