Alexandra Motiu

Alexandra Motiu is a printmaker and illustrator with a fine art background. She works with original printmaking techniques – mainly relief, linocut and wood engraving and has experience in etching, metal engraving & monotype. Her work has surreal qualities and humour, with an old masters’ feel. She aims to make hauntingly beautiful work that will stay with the viewer for a long time. Enjoying busy compositions with complex stories which she builds up like a collage, her works are often rooted in myth and folklore.

Alexandra creates detailed, decorative, and surreal prints that are entirely guided by the processes she works with, where mistakes are appreciated and oddities shine. She draws inspiration from people, specifically portraiture and it is from this sister art form that the stories encapsulated in her prints often develop.

Her recent work has concentrated on using traditional printmaking techniques as a means to uncover the hidden stories of the past: particularly in relation to labour, and labour rights. An understanding of printmaking as a practice of resistance – where slowness, care, and repetition are pivotal – has helped her connect deeply to its history as a trade and given her an insight into what work looked like in the past and what it may evolve into in the future.

Alexandra’s very personal creativity process allows her to directly connect to her work, its historical roots and techniques and, thereby, its finished form. She is passionate about embracing and preserving the knowledge of her craft/trade in its entire creative form, past and present.

After completing a BA (Hons) Fine Art Critical Practice at Brighton, and an MA Illustration from Camberwell College, UAL, Alexandra’s notable projects are illustrated stories from the Bishopsgate Archive, the illustrated poetry book Effigies by Ricardo Reveron Blanco, and a commission of exclusive prints for Fabrica Gallery in Brighton. Her work has been featured in international exhibitions over the past three years throughout Europe and the US, and is permanently at IO Gallery in Brighton & Greenwich Printmakers in London. She shares online the process of making original prints which she is passionate about preserving.