BEATRICE FORSHALL

North House Gallery is delighted to present this exhibition of over 40 large hand-coloured engravings by Beatrice Forshall. Her subject of vanishing species of animals, and some plants, is a long term project that has resulted in a substantial body of original engravings and The Book of Vanishing Species, published in 2022, in which many of the images are reproduced and for which she also wrote the text.

She will give a talk on her work at 2pm at the opening of the exhibition on 11 October at 2pm.

Beatrice makes her engravings using an intaglio press. The process is long: first drawing, then engraving, printing and colouring by hand. The material on which she engraves is fragile, so print runs are short, rarely more than twenty-five, and each final image varies slightly in colour and sometimes composition from the rest of the series, making it unique.

Beatrice Forshall was born in France, where she spent her early years, later moving to Catalonia. She studied illustration at Falmouth College of Art, specialising in drypoint engraving in the last year of her degree. She has since exhibited regularly throughout the UK. Her work has always drawn upon the natural world, and her printmaking revolves around themes central to conservation.

A percentage of the sales of Beatrice’s prints goes towards frontline conservation projects.

From 2017 to 2019 Beatrice was artist-in-residence with the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI), a collaboration between researchers, policymakers and practitioners from the University of Cambridge and leading biodiversity conservation organisations. Her work is part of the permanent collection in CCI’s home, the David Attenborough Building.

To date she has worked with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, BirdLife International and Fauna & Flora International.