Sarah Gillespie – Leopard Moth

Sarah Gillespie makes mezzotint prints, a centuries-old, slow and painstaking intaglio method that produces velvet blacks and delicate tonal shifts. Her work encourages us to decentre the human and refocus our gaze towards the everyday and overlooked within the more-than-human world: moths, blackbirds and winter suns.

The making of the mezzotints uniquely complements the surface of the moths. Through this slow and painstaking method, Gillespie draws each moth from the toothed surface of the copper printing plate by burnishing the light, trapping detailed pattern, tone and shape into the surface.

Gillespie studied 16th & 17th century methods and materials at the Atelier Neo-Medici in Paris and then read Fine Art at Pembroke College, Oxford. Her moth prints have been acquired by the Victoria & Albert Museum for their permanent print & drawing collection and the National Portrait Gallery. Her work is held in the British Museum, London; Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; Museum of Fine Arts, Yekaterinburg; and the Xuihui Museum of Fine Art, Shanghai, China.