Richenda Court successfully combines, on a single sheet, two printmaking techniques that at first glance are hard to bring together. Linocut is a relief print, bold and with clean edges. Etching is an intaglio process, soft and shaded. Not many printmakers do both, she says, because it is technically very demanding.

Lino makes up the bulk of the work. Court cuts it like handwriting. “Lino, for me, is quite like writing,” she says. “You've got patterns to make, go forward, change direction, slow it down, go into lots of detail. It's a very playful medium when I'm cutting, and a lot of the markings are intuitive; I make them up as I go.”¹ Before that can happen, there is a long period of preparation. It begins with Court's sketchbooks, which she takes everywhere with her. Selected drawings from them are worked up, sometimes only years later, into charcoal drawings. Work that can easily take several weeks. Only when she is happy with it are the outlines transferred to the lino block.

She does the faces last, the most nerve-wracking moment of the whole piece. After weeks of carefully making cut after cut, pausing again and again and looking at the work from a distance, a wrong expression on a face can ruin everything. Court points to an older tradition: in Japanese woodcut, only the best cutters did the faces and the hands; the less skilled ones did the leaves.² She knows why.

The etching becomes the complement, the finishing touch to the work, so to speak. Court works with hard ground, soft ground and aquatint, which means acids, and regulations forbid using them at home. So for this part of the work, she goes to a specialist studio. Where the linocut stays playful, the etching sits hard in the paper and adds extra depth.

Getting both onto one sheet is a lengthy process. Court prints the linocut first. Then she leaves the paper to dry for two to three weeks, dampens it again and prints the etching, which needs far more pressure. Two passes, weeks apart, on a huge sheet that must neither crease nor tear. Court has trained her husband to help her carry the wet paper. At first there were many accidents, but these days mishaps hardly ever happen.

The way Court builds an image comes from an earlier life. Before she made prints, she danced and choreographed. “I am constantly looking for movement and balance in the image by turning the lino around to make sure the image is compositionally balanced,” she says. “This way of working is much rooted in my time as a choreographer and dancer where my movements and choreography were based on improvisation so searching for a balance in the work.”³

Even in the finished, motionless print, Court's past is clearly visible. She decides where the viewer looks. “With my background in dance, I can control the position of a face,” she says. “When I was doing choreography, we'd repeat movements or slow them down, so in some pieces there's more than one hand. It's not movement as such, but I'm controlling the direction of the viewer.”⁴ The figures she places stand in protected, timeless settings. One theme runs through her work: images connected to subconscious thoughts, a world without outside interference.

One of Court's most significant bodies of work is Ocean Swell, a series of nearly forty prints made between 2014 and 2018. Here, for the first time, she brought her two techniques together on a single sheet, and a book of its own was published to go with the series.

The series began at a very hard time, shortly after a bereavement in the family. Instead of giving in to her grief, Court turned away from it and started drawing. Two figures appeared, a boy and a girl who dive beneath the ocean. Each figure has a soul keeper who watches over them from a boat on the surface of the sea. The ocean becomes a theatre whose curtains the figures pull back to see whether they can be part of reality again. Behind the Human Ocean, a linocut from 2020, also comes from this world. Court describes the work like this: the girl rising up out of the sea, surrounded by crabs and fish. It symbolises strength. For this print Court received the Stuart Southall Printmaking Prize in 2020.

The two figures in Ocean Swell are invented. The two in the works that followed are based on her own children. Glass Town I and Glass Town II belong side by side, both from 2021, both combining linocut and etching. They were made during the Covid lockdown, when the family was suddenly cooped up together, shut in at home. Son and daughter on the threshold of adulthood, an age at which many paths lie open and every decision significantly changes the future. Glass Town II shows her son holding glass crystals, among them a small crystal that Court's mother once gave her. The future in the crystal, different versions and paths to weigh up, in the son's hand. Glass Town I shows her daughter and goes back to a tiny sketch of a girl falling asleep that meant something to Court. The daughter posed resting, suspended between sleeping and waking. Court chose the title herself first and then researched it. It refers to an early work by the Brontë siblings, the playful imaginary world they invented as children.

Glass Town came out of her own life. Moral Questions came from outside. The 2025 linocut began as a commission from someone she has known a long time, for a multicultural project with musicians and Indian dancers. He wanted a landscape format, which Court struggled with, and sure enough he did not like her first version. Shocked, Court took a few weeks out, went to exhibitions and took her mind off it. When she came back, she drew the Indian dancer and realised it needed a circle, an unusual format, but one that worked this time. The patterns in the image come from drawings she made on a visit to a Buddhist centre. The combination of black and orange reminds Court of ancient Greek vases, which she loves.

Going to a real place to gather material is a recurring part of Court's method: the Buddhist centre for the patterns in Moral Questions, a bird sanctuary for the owl in Summer's Trace. What she likes about it is that you can already have the start of an image and then gather the details it needs separately, once even at the London Aquarium, for studies of a shark. Summer's Trace, a linocut from 2022, shows chess pieces and an owl. Court wanted owls, and she wanted to see them fly. In winter she went to a sanctuary to do so and found the owls frozen still in the cold. So she drew frozen owls and went back once more in summer.

The King's Solace, like all of Court's works, leaves room for your own interpretation. At the centre of the story is a horse-loving king, held by a large, comforting hand. Although the work is purely an etching, made from three plates, the bold yellow shapes look almost like linocut. They break through the traditional, finely worked image in the background almost like paper cut-outs. The work is one of Court's favourites, and she is thinking of making a whole series like it.

Alongside the large works stand small, instinctive pieces. Shilo and Peregrine, both from 2022, were made quickly, straight from drawings Court liked, in colours that felt right. They were given names Court likes, such as Peregrine, named after the peregrine falcon. They are less about story than about pure image-making and, Court says, are powerful precisely because of it.

Court's path has been a straight one; her first concrete interest in art goes back to childhood. A painting technique with marbles covered in paint impressed her so strongly that she remembers it to this day. At sixteen, the interest became serious. At the University of Brighton she took a degree in Expressive Arts, in contemporary dance and fine art. She never wanted to do anything else. She found her way into printmaking there through a print room upstairs. Her first technique was etching.

Her parents were completely different. Her mother, South African and fashionable, had challenged apartheid as a young woman. Her father was an introverted romantic from a small village in Norfolk, a highly skilled joiner and carpenter. “Their contrasting qualities have infiltrated my work,” she says of them both.⁵

Everything Court knows about technique she picked up over some twenty years of evening classes at the Putney School of Art and Morley College in London. Her tutors there were Richard Michell, Marc Balakjian and Frank Connolly. They were not painters but the printers of great painters. Richard Michell editioned for David Hockney. Marc Balakjian worked at Studio Prints, the London editioning studio, and printed there for Lucian Freud, among others. Frank Connolly, Head of Printmaking at Morley College, editioned for Maggi Hambling. Through these teachers, Court's training can be traced all the way to the “School of London”, to the printers of Freud, Auerbach and Rego. “The tutors at Morley were all so talented and humble, and so generous with their knowledge,” says Court. “Looking back, they were passing a part of history on to you. And sadly they've all passed away now, so we're the ones who have the responsibility of carrying it on.”⁶

In 2021 Court became an Associate Member of the Royal Society of Printmakers, founded in the nineteenth century and based at Bankside Gallery in London. In 2024 she became a full member, a status conferred through election by existing members and held for life. Since then she has carried the initials RE after her name. “I worked hard for that, I can tell you, to get those initials,” she says.⁷

Today Court works in two places. The first is her own garden studio in Surrey, where most of the prints are made. “My studio's in the garden, so I can hear the birds and look at the flowers,” she says. “It's separate from the house, its own little bubble.”⁸ The plants outside the window often find their way into her work. The second is Thameside Print Studio in Woolwich, where the large-format, elaborate prints and the etchings are made. She travels there right across London. “It's not a nine-to-five,” says Court. “I'll be leaving at half six to go to Woolwich to print, and I'll be lucky to do two, and I'll be back about five. But I enjoy it.”⁹ For Court, printmaking is a social craft. You usually end up teaching, and “you have to be nice to each other, because you're sharing. There's a camaraderie, and a lot of humour.”¹⁰

Court deliberately keeps the editions of her work small. She prints everything herself, and that takes time. “I want the person to own something special,” she says. “They're all handmade.”¹¹ An etching on its own rarely runs to more than about twenty-five impressions, because aquatint and soft ground have a limited life and the plate slowly wears. The large works are limited to even fewer prints, because they take so much effort and Court would rather make something new than print the same thing forever.

Two painters who, like Court, are comfortable making large work are among her role models. She calls Paula Rego one of her all-time favourite artists, for her political stance as a woman, her daringness and her boldness. In Jenny Saville she admires the power of sensitivity within her drawing and the gravitas of her large works. Another role model is Gertrude Hermes, a wood engraver whose prints are held by the Tate. Court was overwhelmed by the fine graphic skills, the attention to detail and the bold compositions. And yet she herself stepped back from painting. “I'd probably go back to painting, if I'm honest, I feel quite sad that I stopped, because being a printmaker is all-consuming. I love portraits, and I love German Expressionism very much.”¹²

Traditionally, plates are destroyed once the edition is finished. Court does not do this. “You're supposed to destroy the plates when you've done the edition,” she says. “I don't, really, I keep them all, labelled, in cases so they're protected. No, I don't destroy them. I don't want to.”¹³

Works by Richenda Court

All works by Richenda Court

Collections, exhibitions, awards

Public collections

• Victoria and Albert Museum, London: Shadow I (linocut, 2015), museum no. E.794:26-2022, gift of the Printmakers Council (accessioned 2022).
• British Library, London (named on her own website, without work titles).
• RE Diploma Collection, Royal Society of Printmakers (deposited on election; work title not documented).

Awards and memberships

• Stuart Southall Printmaking Prize 2020 (for Behind the Human Ocean), Royal Society of British Artists, Mall Galleries, London.
• Associate Member (ARE) 2021, full member (RE) 2024, Royal Society of Printmakers, for life (at the time of election: Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers; renamed by Supplemental Charter, April 2026).
• For Arts Sake Printmaking Award, Ealing (year and terms not documented).
• Arts Council grant for the Glass Town animated film.
• Member of LOOP Artists (London printmaking collective).

Solo exhibitions

• Glass Town, The Muse Gallery, Portobello Road, London, 2022.
• Henry Sotheran's, Mayfair, London, c. 2018 (linocuts and etchings).

Group exhibitions (selection)

• Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2026, London (Aurelius's Wings, Gallery I, selected by Katherine Jones).
• RE Original Prints 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, Bankside Gallery, London.
• Small But Mighty 2024, Bankside Gallery (Vanessa).
• International Original Print Exhibition 2025, Bankside Gallery (Moral Questions).
• Royal Society of British Artists Annual Exhibition 2020, Mall Galleries, London.
• “50 Years of Artists Prints”, Printmakers Council, 2015 (Shadow I).

Education

• University of Brighton: degree in Expressive Arts (contemporary dance and fine art).
• Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, London (named on her own website alongside Brighton as a place of training; dates and order not documented).
• Putney School of Art and Morley College, London: some twenty years of evening classes in printmaking (tutors Richard Michell, Marc Balakjian, Frank Connolly).

Projects, teaching and media

• Cultural Olympiad 2012: representing Surrey, edition of 40 screenprints (Ochre Print Studios, Guildford), opening at the Royal Albert Hall.
• Teaching at the Putney School of Art and Morley College, London (currently reduced in favour of her own work).
• Drypoint workshop at the Petersfield Museum and Art Gallery.
• Ocean Swell (book accompanying the series of the same name).
• Glass Town animated film, 2020 (animation Hannah Brewerton, music Amit Rai Sharma, produced over Zoom, Arts Council funding).
• Printmaking Today, Issue 119, Autumn 2021, article “Dancing Forward”.

Further works (not in current stock)

• Shadow I, Aurelius's Wings, Hermes View, Star Script, Vanessa.

Further influences

• Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Isadora Duncan (studied at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge); Matisse and Picasso; the drawings of Leonardo, Raphael and Botticelli; Expressionism and Cubism.

Sources

1. Studio Sonsu conversation, transcript 9 June 2026, confirmed 17 June 2026. ↩
2. Studio Sonsu conversation, transcript 9 June 2026. ↩
3. Written artist interview, Richenda Court. ↩
4. Studio Sonsu conversation, transcript 9 June 2026. ↩
5. Written artist interview, Richenda Court. ↩
6. Studio Sonsu conversation, transcript 9 June 2026. ↩
7. Studio Sonsu conversation, transcript 9 June 2026. Note: since April 2026 the Society has been called the Royal Society of Printmakers by Supplemental Charter (previously the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers); the members' initials RE remain unchanged (announcement by the President, Prof David Ferry, 23 April 2026). ↩
8. Studio Sonsu conversation, transcript 9 June 2026. ↩
9. Studio Sonsu conversation, transcript 9 June 2026, confirmed 17 June 2026. ↩
10. Studio Sonsu conversation, transcript 9 June 2026. ↩
11. Studio Sonsu conversation, transcript 9 June 2026. ↩
12. Studio Sonsu conversation, transcript 9 June 2026. ↩
13. Studio Sonsu conversation, transcript 9 June 2026. ↩