arvon wellen

Arvon Wellen is a British born artist working in Spain. In 2017 he won an Atlante award / prize for printmaking from the Museo Do Gravado Á Estampa Dixital in Galicia and an “excellence” prize at the Awagami International Mini Print Exhibition.

  His practice includes painting, making books and printmaking but the traditional boundaries are blurred by the fact that the processes he uses also includes the use of computers, inkjet printing and photography.

Story telling is a structural part of his layered prints and the role of working women is a major theme that also incorporates the effects of industrialization on society.

    He is particularly interested in the way that history and structures are created out of layers where the present may hide or alternatively partially reveal the past. While not suggesting this is archeology there is similarly in the way he uses layers that show through other layers both in the form of transparent colours or in the form of actual layers of paper or acetate.

 His teaching experience was firstly at Chelsea School of Art from 1978 to 1984 and at Maidstone College of Art from 1980 to 1984. From 1984 he was appointed Senior lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University where he was the field leader and head of printmaking. Since leaving Anglia in 2000 he has worked as an independent artist, as a printmaker, maker of books and painter; while his interest in story telling and in the theatre meant that he also spent some time making films for Youth Dance England and other dance groups.

  His move to Spain, or more precisely Cataluña, was not prompted by the desire for sunshine but more from a sense of community by joining established friends who are artists and writers from all over the world who practice there.

“…Arvon Wellen is interested in the connection between history and technology and the role of writing. In Bede and the Shipbuilder's Wife, he portrays these ideas beautifully in a series of digital prints referencing calligraphic marks and machinery.”

http://www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/news-archive/mackem12.htm