Rye gallery holdsAckroyd show

Ackroyd’s work has, over the past thirty years, gained him an international reputation, a Senior Fellowship of the Royal College of Art and a CBE. His pieces hang in The Tate and New York’s MoMA.

“I’m in the business of communicating,” he explains. “One person can look at a Picasso etching and it leaves them absolutely cold. Someone else could think ‘I’ve got to have that’. That’s the effect I’m trying to achieve.”

His beguiling, shadowy monochromatic studies of some of the harshest landscapes of the British Isles are created by an etching process that requires artistry, craftsmanship and considerable skill and effort.

He paints directly onto a wax-covered copper sheet, opening up spaces into which a later bath of acid will ‘bite’. It’s into these gaps that the printers’ ink will eventually settle, before being pressed against a page.

Rye Art Gallery is situated in the High Street and is open from 10.30am - 1pm and 2pm - 5pm Monday to Saturday and noon - 4pm Sundays and bank holidays. The gallery is closed on Tuesdays.