Artist Books by Isabel Knowland

I began making books while studying for an art foundation course. I love the sculptural aspect of books and find it a satisfying way of using printmaking to convey ideas.

Homage to Bach

The Bach series of screenprints and books all take their inspiration from the 48 Preludes and Fugues. The colours were determined by my own synaesthetic response to the individual notes of the scale. Each print denotes the colour of the main note of the scale together with the fourth and fifth notes, thus creating a colour ‘chord’.

‘Homage to Bach 2’
12 screenprints uniquely bound in a portfolio cover
24 × 18.5 × 1.5 cm

The Wisdom of Trees

15 pages that open out to reveal quotations and proverbs about trees.

Dramatis Personae

An ABC of emotions as personified by Shakespeare’s characters. Each page is overlaid by the particular letter taken from the original portfolio, and each emotion and the speech from which it is derived is detailed at the end of the book.

Scaffolding

A flag book of Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Scaffolding’.

Inference

This book is based on Gregory Warren Wilson’s poem ‘Inference’ which explores the notion that walls or barriers, although physical in their manifestation, are actually created in the mind and can thus be easily dismantled.

Warren Wilson’s poem refers to the wall in Jerusalem that separates the Palestinians from the Jews, but the meaning behind the poem is universal.

12 digitally printed, embossed and screen printed pages, 53 × 38 cm, in a handmade clamshell box 57 × 42 cm.