Jill Dunn / Riverbird

Jill Dunn is a printmaker, part-time Italian teacher, and mother of two living in Penryn, Cornwall, UK with her two small sons and a fat cat who lost his tail. She has been practising relief printmaking on and off for over a decade. In early 2021 she took the leap and started printmaking in a full-time capacity under the name Riverbird. Jill describes; “Although I haven’t pursued proper training in art or printmaking since A-level, I have always drawn, painted and printed as it feels like an essential and natural activity that I can’t not do”.

From her home studio, Jill, a self-confessed “messy worker”, works almost always in relief-printmaking, practising linocut and wood-engraving. From her own observational drawings and photos, she combines clean lines and bold colours in a figurative style.

“I love each step of the process, particularly how different they are. From days of sketching, to weeks of composition (much of which happens in my head), the hours of carving lino or acrylic and the precious inky ‘printing days’ which occur when I know nobody else will be around. I think its this diverse range of activities involved in the process which keeps me relief printing… if one day I fancy printing, I print. If the next day I fancy sketching on the beach, I go.”

Living next to Penryn River in Cornwall, Jill is surrounded by estuaries, woody valleys, sandy beaches, and rocky coves, with a stunningly beautiful footpath wrapping the entire county like a ribbon. “Cornwall is the inspiration for all of my work so far. A lifelong fascination with water, trees and birds lies at the heart of my work,” says the printmaker. The name Riverbird grew from her time spent living on a boat on a river (for 12 years), and her sketchbooks being filled with sketches of Cormorants balanced on buoys, and Curlews and egrets on the nearby river beaches. Jill comments; “On many mornings I dip in the sea or river after the school-run and am so often accompanied by cormorants, gulls, little grebes and even a kingfisher or two.”

“Like so many, it was probably the weird year of the first Covid lockdowns that pushed me to pursue my printmaking as more of a ‘main hustle’ than a ‘side hustle’,” Jill tells us. She lost a lot of her language-teaching hours, but decided she was lucky to have time to create more artwork, so started preparing for her first exhibition and receiving commissions. Jill sells on etsy, and uses Instagram as her “shop window display”. She dedicates a phenomenal number of hours each week to pursuing this dream of being an artist, and although it does not yet cover her life expenses (she is still teaching), Jill has been lucky enough to start teaching linocut courses across local venues. These include full day courses and shorter rubber-stamp making courses, as well as events for small groups in peoples’ houses; “This really helps me to stay connected with people and to have to articulate what it is that I am doing each day”.

Jill has recently finished a commission for a local fine furniture maker, designing a linocut which was then laser engraved as a centrepiece for a commemorative bench in the National Maritime Museum. Simultaneously, she has been re-working a prestigious band’s album covers to create linocut limited edition posters for a forthcoming album anniversary. On her hopes for the future, Jill concludes; “I hope to build a larger body of work with themed ‘collections’, find stockists for my prints, undertake random wonderful commissions, and continue to draw and print each day…. forever.”  

www.riverbird.co.uk
@riverbirdstudio

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