Sybil Andrews

Place: Bury St Edmunds

Born: 1898

Death: 1992

Biography:

Sybil Andrews was an English-Canadian artist who specialised in printmaking and is often remembered for her reductionist linocuts.
Born in 1898 in Bury St Edmunds, Andrews was unable to attend art school after finishing secondary school as her family lacked the funds to pay for tuition. Andrews first apprenticed as a welder and worked at an aeroplane factory during World War I, where she helped in the development of the first all-metal aeroplane for the Bristol Welding Company. During this period she took an art correspondence course and after the war returned to Bury St Edmunds where she was employed as an art teacher at Portland House School. She continued to practice art and met architect Cyril Power, who became a mentor figure, and then her partner until 1938. Between the years of 1930 and 1938, Andrews and Power shared a studio in Hammersmith where they developed a great collaboration, influenced each other and adopted similar printmaking techniques. The couple even produced a series of sports posters together under the joint signature of "Andrew Power."
Between 1922 and 1924 Andrews attended the Heatherley School of Fine Art in London. With the beginning of World War II, Andrews resumed work as a welder for the British Power Company, constructing warships. There she met Walter Morgan, whom she married in 1943. Seven of Andrews' wartime depictions of ships are in the collection of the Royal Air Force Museum London.
In England one of the largest collections in public ownership is held by St Edmundsbury Borough Council Heritage Service Bury St Edmunds. This collection includes a number of early water-colour paintings, executed while the artist was still living in Suffolk. Many of these works are digitised and publicly available to view at ehive. Although Andrews had worked in other mediums – such as etchings, paintings, and monotypes – her main passion and interest had remained linocuts since the late 1920s.
In 1925 she was employed by Iain Macnab as the first secretary of The Grosvenor School of Modern Art, where she also attended Claude Flight's linocutting classes. Around 1926 she began producing linocuts and one of her earliest prints Limehouse is in the British Museum Collection. Between 1928 and 1938 she exhibited linocuts extensively through shows organised by Flight.
In 1922, Andrews and Power moved to London. Three years later, the pair became part of the staff of the Grosvenor School of Modern Art – Power was appointed as one of the founding lecturers, while Andrews became the school's first secretary. Both Power and Andrews were swept up in Britain's linocut craze of the 1920s and 1930s under the tutelage of Claude Flight, instructor and champion of linocutting at the Grosvenor School. Flight, a proponent of the relatively new medium, believed that linocuts were most appropriate for expressing the modern age in which they lived, particularly because artists were able to move forward and stamp their own unique mark on the medium, free from the confines of tradition unlike the woodcuts based in historical Japanese methods. Likewise, Andrews quickly absorbed Flight's enthusiasm for linocutting and made it her life's work.
Andrews' contemporaries, fellow students of Claude Flight, include Swiss artist Lill Tschudi, and Australian artists Dorrit Black, Ethel Spowers, and Eveline Syme. The Grosvenor School style was influenced by elements of cubism, futurism and vorticism – capturing the machine age through dynamism and movement.
Unlike the laborious and difficult woodcutting technique, linocutting was prized for its simple tools and materials, making it economical and particularly appealing to Andrews – a woman of modest means. Following Flight's process, Andrews used ordinary household linoleum, gouges made from umbrella ribs, and a simple wooden spoon to rub against the paper during printing. The softness of linoleum prevented the cutting of fine lines, resulting in the bold shapes seen in Andrews works. Alternately, Andrews often applied a technique of repetitive hatch-marks in order to create the impression of texture.
Flight's most technical achievement to the medium was abandoning the key-block, forcing his students to create structure with color. In this way, Andrews relies on three to five blocks (one per color) and common print inks applied with a simple roller in order to create her lively prints.
Andrews was influenced by the prevailing art movements of her time, predominantly Vorticism which had strong roots in England and Futurism which originated in Italy, by combining both styles she was able to reflect upon the fast-paced changes inherent to a modernizing society. Sharing Flight’s fascination with motion, Andrews creates compositions which capture movement in all forms – human, animal, and mechanical. A recurring theme in Andrews work is sport, from horse racing and jumping, to rowing crews, otter hunting, and speedway riders; through this she conveys the exhilaration, speed and thrill of action. Andrews furthermore portrays the vibrancy found in typical English social imagery, which ranged from rural life, farmlands, manual work, and the various intricacies of city life. Additionally, during the 1930s, Andrews created seven linocuts based on the drama of the life of Christ.

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