Ivana Svabic-Cannon

IVA – Ivana Svabic Cannon is Serbian born artist from Belgrade, where she studded printmaking and illustration at The University of Applied Arts.

Iva started her career as a children’s book illustrator in London in ’92. She has illustrated fifteen children’s books, published by major international publishers and has exhibited widely. Iva had ten solo shows at over two hundred group exhibitions. As a qualified Art and Design teacher and runs workshops in drawing and printmaking.

She moved to Bristol in ‘99, and this is when she joined Spike Print Studios, where she creates her printmaking work. Iva is also a member of ULUPUDS – Serbian Association of Applied Artists and Designers since ‘90. Series of linocut and woodcut prints Iva have been creating through the insatiable drive for experimentation. Her images are inspired by nature and light. Linocut technique, as her main medium in printmaking, allows her to use lines in an expressive and energetic way. Most of Iva’s images are abstract, which she creates with the dynamic interplay of lines and patterns. Her prints are disarming in their visual simplicity, and yet they contain a complexity arrived at through decades of searching for essence.

Iva loves working in mixed medium, as she also incorporates other techniques and materials in her printmaking work such as, collage Chine Collé, making paper casts and printing from found objects! She also express herself in ceramics. Iva print her images in small editions up to 30 prints on white Somerset 250 gr paper. Under a great pressure on an etching press her prints are embossed as well as printed, which gives out a special three-dimensional effect. All plates are inked by hand in oil based inks and there may be a slight variation in tone or colour in the whole edition.