Tessa Pearson in her studio

Tessa Pearson is passionate about colour. She studied textile design at West Surrey College of Art and Design and the Royal college of Art, and enjoyed a successful career for many years producing hand -painted fabrics, selling them at her London studio/gallery Designer2 and around the world.

Moving away from London to bring up her three children, Tessa painted large colourful watercolours, and has recently returned to her first love of printmaking, revelling in the expressive mark-making qualities and element of unpredictability of printmaking.

“When I made my first monoprints recently it was as if all the bells went off together, and I knew I had found the medium I needed to work with.”

Inspired by memories of colour and pattern seen on her travels in Africa and Europe, Tessa works in series, exploring and revisiting a theme many times. Her bold abstract prints are mostly monotypes, often combined with collagraphs and elements of etchings with chin -colle. Oil based etching inks are rolled thinly onto acetate sheets, and the image is created by wiping, brushing and drawing into the inks before paper is laid gently over and the plate is passed through the press. Many layers are built up, resulting in rich luminous colour and texture. Tessa often completes a print by adding a final layer of thick unguous ink, producing an excitingly tactile surface quality.

“In my work I try to express the physical impact I experience when I react passionately to a glimpse of a violet pot on a cobalt blue wall in a magical exotic garden, or a lozenge of acid green flashing from a patchwork Devon landscape.”