In September 2023 Josephine was awarded the Mortitz-Heyman Residency at Borgo Pignano, creating a vast body of works inspiring her new exhibition with Weald Contemporary. In Josephines new collection of drawings, prints and paintings Toscana Heat/Light we are drawn into the heat and light of Tuscany. We caught up with Josephine to find out more about her life and work.

So Josephine - would you start please by introducing yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself and your work. 

Josephine: I’m an artist and illustrator from Devon with a keen interest in wildlife and storytelling. I teach printmaking and love working with all kinds of people to find a way for them to engage with creative processes. My works usually begin on location and are often finished whilst out and about; these works and walks inspire my studio practise where print making helps expand my ideas and open up narratives and imagination. I work as an illustrator and write and illustrate children's picture books which are always informed by my drawing practise. Drawing is my greatest love.

Can you tell us about Birch Press and how that came about?

Josephine: Birch Press houses all my illustration for childrens picture book, novels and chapter books. The work is rooted in all the same sensibilities and values as my drawing, painting and print practise; landscape, the natural world, living and working with animals etc. I really love how books, and picture books in particular, bring artworks into homes, schools, libraries; it is the most direct way for people of any background to access art and in the picturebook form 32 pages of it ! It is often childrens first introduction to great artists. Looking at picture books was my biggest inspiration as a child.

I decided to separate my illustration from my painting, drawing and printmaking practise because it made it simpler to promote the different work and organise online portfolios. It’s hard enough as an artist that many industries want to quickly pigeon hole creatives output. There are so many ways in which these kinds of disciplines over-lap and it really just comes down to the intention and application but it frustrates me that Illustrators are sometimes considered lesser artists. A wonderful artist may find the book the best form for their work, or may care that children are the recipients of it. Thats a wonderful thing that shouldn't be overlooked !

Did you have a favourite work of art or artist when you were growing up and did you always know you were an artist?

Josephine: As I mention above my first introduction to artists work was through picture books and I absolutely loved Brian Wildsmith, Shirley Hughes, Mairi Hedderwick and Raymond Briggs. They sparked the first realisations that this could be a job, a way of life. My mum was a dress maker and taught Textiles and my sister is a brilliant painter so I was surrounded by creativity as a child. I also really remember my mum pinning up a copy I’d made at primary school of Monets ‘The Cliffs at Etretat’ and feeling really proud of it. These kinds of little boosts really matter in giving young people the confidence to keep making work, especially in today's state school systems that so poorly support creative thinking. My sister and I were very lucky to have a mum who always emotionally backed our pursuits in the arts.

When you were hosting the Drawn to Print workshop at Weald Contemporary you had some beautiful and unexpected equipment to work with, do you find yourself continuing to experiment with new ways of mark making or do you have a favoured toolkit you return to time and again?

Josephine: At Cambridge School of Art we were always taught to keep challenging ourselves with new tools and processes. I think that has stayed with me. For me its all about a balance between skill and control coupled with innovation and playfulness which allows for some serendipity. This only comes from lots of practise! I also think the idea sometimes dictates the process – so I let that happen too.

I do have a kit for working on location but I swap and change things. I try to take out a limited tool kit most days to take some decisions out of the equation, but it will usually consist of a small watercolour pan set, some tubes of gouche and jars of ink and a full pencil case with charcoals and pencils.

Can you tell us more about being awarded the Mortitz-Heyman Residency at Borgo Pignano, and creating this incredibly soulful body of works that inspired your solo exhibition with Weald Contemporary?

Josephine: The Royal Drawing School is a gift that keeps on giving. They so beautifully support their alumni with residency opportunities. It is through these kinds of residencies that I have really learnt how to work in the studio and what to do with these drawings I make on location. The residency at Pignano is quite isolating in ways. You have your own studio apartment on this huge estate and some days I wouldn’t say more than ‘Ciao’ to the farmers all day long. It’s a strange thing that wouldn't be sustainable for too long (at least for me) but it gives you this rare opportunity to not think about anyone or anything other than the work. Everyday is organised solely around that. Each day I would head out early with my sketchbooks and drawing board, with various materials and by the end of each day I’d find a new thing that I wanted to return to for tomorrow, considering when the light might be best, the shadows longest. I have to pace myself as drawing is very exhausting, and I was walking miles in the heat, so I’d tend to allow time to play in my sketchbook as well as time for large focused works. I’d also spend time zooming in and zooming out, focusing on close ups of flora and fauna and then placing these moments into larger works. It requires a certain amount of discipline but once I start it becomes like an obsession; I did not want to leave ! It was so wonderful to have the opportunity to show all of the work together at Weald and reflect on this time. It gave me the opportunity to continue leaning into the experience and make works reflecting my time there, such as the large hanging monoprints.

You once described the act of drawing to be ‘like a spell’ perhaps beginning a drawing and realising all at once that hours have past by and you are still completely focused on what you are doing. Has this always been the case? and can you tell us about a favourite drawing experience from Borgo Pignano?

Josephine: This really began with spending more time drawing on location, which is something we did a lot of on my degree at CSA. I realised that I was sitting still and remaining totally focused (I think we’d call it hyperfocusing nowadays!) Every drawing starts with a period of feeling like I don’t know how to make the right marks, how to organise them and make them communicate what I want them too, but it usually starts to become clear once I’ve dropped into the process more – a bit like meditating or taking a walk, it takes a while to really sink into what you're doing. I think this is why drawing on location is so important for me; coupling the physicality of being outdoors and adding some hurdles puts a boundary between the idea and the work and helps me to turn it into something more than just a straight copy of what’s in front of me. You’re there for extended periods of time, with all the stories in your head, all the emotions of what's going on in your life, and you're responding to the world directly around you.

I can remember each drawing I made and where I was when I made it, even the thoughts that were running through my mind. It creates a of kind time capsule of that moment in my mind. The one I really remember was the last drawing I made, ‘View to Borgo Pignano’ when I was exhausted after walking for hours zig zagging my way across the estate. It was boiling hot and I found shade under a little oak tree in the middle of this huge field. All the wildflowers surrounded me, the grasses where singing with grass hoppers and little hard working dung beetles and ants. The clouds were racing across the sky casting shadows over the rolling hills and I began this enormous drawing. I felt I’d bitten off more than I could chew but I was so tired I just relaxed into the moment, focusing on the fact that this was my last afternoon, the last day alone in this amazing place. It became one of my favourite drawings. I think you can see it isn’t as well organised as some of the other large drawings, but I think it has this very full sense of Tuscany, alive and buzzing with so much wildlife and colour and movement.

Heading Out to Draw, 132x184cm, 126cmx178cm, charcoal, 2023 Unframed

You have produced some Silent Book which are beautiful, Can you talk more about this?

Josephine: I love silent books because they can be read by any person of any language or reading ability. It also gives the reader this sense of creating the story alongside the artist. Our schools push reading levels so hard onto young children despite evidence that this can do more harm than good. We really hamper children in their creativity with all these tests and rules around language, reading and writing. Wordless picture books puts the story telling back into the childs hands and if adults are reading with children it is very quickly obvious who is better at reading pictures! Adults often forget this particular skill !

In terms of my practise the wordless/silent book is so akin to all my work- a sense of narrative, of how images work side by side to tell a story. Its always on my mind. If I paint a house with a lit window, the subsequent painting will be of who might be sitting just inside and then what landscape this house sits in and so on.

What are you reading at the moment?

Josephine: I nearly always have non-fiction on the go alongside fiction as I gobble up fiction and am very slow at non-fiction! I’m reading A field guide to getting lost by Rebecca Solnit and I’m rereading Little Women for the millionth time. Very comforting.

We were discussing your open-source printing press which led us to discover our mutual appreciation of School Prints, can you talk a bit about how you see print evolving and becoming more accessible?

Josephine: The history and nature of print making is all about ‘the dissemination of information to the masses’. Like picture books, print is a way to make art works available and affordable to a greater amount of people. I teach printmaking at a university and love seeing the thrill of the reveal and the magic of the science of print dawn on new printmakers. Unfortunately, printmaking processes can be expensive to access as we often need specialist equipment so I love exploring and teaching processes that can be done in a sophisticated way by anyone. The tiny Etching press means we can bring printmaking to schools and rural areas. I’m also really interest in how we better support rural arts opportunities. So often funding is based in cities, and when it does come to rural areas its isn’t down the lanes but still centred in local cities. I am much more interested in creating very good opportunities for fewer people rurally than I am in reaching larger audience in urban places that already have these opportunities. Cities have the infrastructure, the funding, the museums and the access routes. How we reach children and communities who have none of this is far more interesting and important to me. Rural communities are so often overlooked and there is a general assumption that living rurally means more wealth; in fact some of the most deprived UK areas are rural!

Studio playlist time! Please could you list 10 of your favourite studio tracks? It can be what you are listening to at the moment or an ultimate collection, the choice yours…

Josephine: I get absolute obsessions and my current is Kate Bollinger and there are constants like Kate Bush and Erykah Badu but the mood has to be exactly right for what I’m working on. My ultimate studio playlist would go something like;

Kate Bollinger – Lady in the Darkest Hour

Goat Rodeo – Attaboy

Talking Heads – This must be the place

Eykah Badu – Appletree

The Fretless – Waiving to Ryan

Johnny Flynn – The Wrote and The writ

Tom Verlaine – Breakin' My Heart

Kate Bush – Bertie

Etta James – I'd rather go blind

Solomon Burke – None of us are free

All of the works included in Josephines exhibition will be for sale via out online shop until 9 Feb 2024.

Josephine Birch

Catherine Knight

Edward Liddle