Welcome to HooperHart, home of the creative endeavours of me, Cal, aka Rudy and the Rowan Tree. This blog will mostly feature updates on what I’m up to, where I’m exhibiting and where you can buy my work 🙂
I live in the beautiful Renfrewshire countryside by the Clyde Coast with my husband (who’s a sign painter) and my dog (who’s a rescue terrier) and I make screen-printed and painted wooden art and accessories, specialising in framed dioramas depicting imaginary scenes from around the British Isles and beyond, with a modern Folk Art flavour. Because every piece is individually painted, printed and assembled by hand, each one is completely unique.
Since graduating from Edinburgh College of Art in 1997 I have worked with various media such as ceramics, graphic design, textiles and collagraph printing. Inspired by a love of colour and pattern I started screen-printing in 2015, and quickly settled on printing on plywood as I loved the texture of the ink on the bare wood surface. In 2016 I joined a studio in Glasgow where I learned how to prepare vector drawings and use laser cutting machines, which enabled me to develop ways of using plywood further. I made my first framed dioramas for a large group show in Perthshire in 2017, and the response was so positive that they have now become my main focus. My work is influenced by analogue animation and the work of pioneering silhouette animator Lotte Reiniger, and also by my time working in the theatre and my love of the way a whole immersive world can be created by the careful painting and placement of a few flat pieces of wood! It can magically transport you to another place, and I try to capture an element of that in my work, using storytelling, folklore and local wildlife as a starting point for each design.
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HooperHart 