Austin Cole

Austin is a Welsh artist printmaker born in Pembrokeshire South Wales and living and working in London for the past 34 years. He has an MA and BA Hons degree in Fine Art from the Sir John Cass School of Art. Austin in addition has studied printing making at the City Lit, the Slade School of Art and currently works at Morley College. He has over 25 years experience of printing in etching and stone lithograph and his prints have been exhibited extensively in London, Bath and in other cities around the UK. He has exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer exhibition, the Discerning Eye, the Lynn Painters Stainers Prize exhibition, Originals and Bite, at the Courtauld Institution as part of their East Wing exhibitions of Contemporary Art, Living in London at the Bankside Gallery, the London Group and at the Royal College of Art in their Secrets exhibition. Austin was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists (RBA) in 2011 and to the Society of Graphic Fine Arts (SGFA) in 2014. His artistic inspirations/influences are many from artists such as Anselm Kiefer and Christian Boltanski to artists working in the medium of printmaking such as Rembrandt, Goya, Toulouse Lautrec, Frank Brangwn, Muirhead Bone, Picasso and contemporary printmakers such as Norman Ackroyd, Chris Orr, Celia Paul, Jason Hicklin to name a few. His main subjects are the urban landscape of the city and the coastal landscape of Pembrokeshire. His working techniques involve the use of photographs he takes of cities such as London. He then he prepares tracings on which the design is made in pencil and then transferred in the studio onto metal plates which are then dipped in acid to etch the design onto the plate. He then uses a medium called aquatints which is a resin melted onto the metal plate which is then stopped out using an acid resist pen and dipped back into the acid to obtain the stunning tonal qualities you will find in his work. Austin works in a traditional medium but using modern technology and techniques to explore the medium of printmaking. He is very much a contemporary artist working in the now.