We first saw South African artist Anna Alcock‘s beautiful artwork in 2014 in an art exhibition at her Inky Cuttlefish Studios in East London.  We immediately thought her style of artwork would be great for an Orchestra of Samples album cover.

Anna uses printmaking as her primary medium, carving/etching her designs into lino, and essentially covering it with ink and then printing it!  She occasionally uses wood and other materials, but prefers lino for it’s texture.  In her art, she likes to interpret spaces, light and darkness in their most profound sense and her very African style of artwork often deals with the subjects of myths, folktales and stories exploring the complexities and ambiguities of the human condition.  

What is a print you might ask?  She explains on her website “I would define a print as anything that has a matrix (a surface from which the print is made – this could be your hand to make a hand print), involves ink or pigment and transferring an image onto another surface“.

Anna graduated in 2004 with an MA in Printmaking from Camberwell College of Arts in London and before that earned her fine arts degree from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, where she majored in printmaking and art history.  And so as not to confuse matters, she points out on her site “Please note that controversially when I refer to ‘a print’ in the traditional sense, I do not mean computer print outs, or mass produced printing methods. Sometimes I print by hand and sometimes I use my traditional etching press or a screen-printing table… each technique requires lots of muscle power, attention to detail, patience and that elusive magical moment of chance to make a truly great piece of artwork.”