The Great Atlantic Map Works Gallery

Julian Poole, artist, engraver and printmaker, was born in Newport, Monmouthshire in 1934. He has had little in the way of formal art education beyond A level studies at school and some Open College Federation credits in figure drawing, painting and printmaking. His background is academic.

“I came to wood engraving by accident and curiosity” says Julian, “a conflation of exhibitions, demonstrations, second hand books and time provided by my early retirement from Manchester Polytechnic in 1990. Peter Reddick has given me tuition and unlimited encouragement, firstly through the Open College credits and now with Spike Island Printers, in Bristol. Sarah van Niekerk has also been and important influence via her courses at West Dean.

“For fifteen years I’ve half lived in the south west of France. These engravings are of friends, neighbours and people there, who caught my eye in various markets and towns.”

Since 1997 the Society of Wood Engravers has regularly accepted Julian Poole’s work and he has been shown at the Royal West of England Academy’s Open and Print exhibitions, the British Miniature Print Exhibitions as well as the Welsh Artist of the Year exhibition. His work is represented in the Permanent Print Collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.