About Janet Brooke

I have been a printmaker all my working life since I fell in love with screenprinting as an art student. I can still remember my amazement when I first pulled a squeegee across a screen and marvelled at that glorious expanse of colour glistening before me. And all these years later I still enjoy the process of printmaking …. making stencils, cutting blocks, and finally printing and the excitement of seeing a finished print with the added frisson that, despite the careful planning, a happy accident might have given me a result that is more than I could have anticipated. My subject matter is the cityscape in all its many forms from grand panoramic views to the minutiae of city streets. Initially inspired by my local environment in East London, long before it became fashionable, my prints have moved on to encompass everything from local shop fronts to Christopher Wren’s Churches and the latest vanity towers in cities as diverse as London, Hong Kong and my new home, Brighton. I try to create something of the essence of a place rather than a simple representation. In my latest prints I have been exploring two themes …. First a return to an earlier interest in gasometers, those magnificent pieces of industrial architecture now under threat of extinction. And most recently, using a mix of images, both new and recycled, I have been attempting to portray the City of London as it is now ….. a crazy mashup of dubious new developments, chaotic building sites, ancient monuments and the spaces in between.