Amy Levoir Spencer

I am an illustrator and a printmaker currently based in Edinburgh, which I’ve now called home for almost four years. After studying children’s book illustration, I found that I no longer felt any connection to my work and I found it difficult to recreate that sense of joy around making that I had felt before starting university. So instead I started again, taking inspiration from, predominantly, the Scottish coast and life on our surrounding islands.
The natural world and social history has always flowed through the work I create and even more so now as I have been recently researching the lives of Victorian fisherwomen, who made their livelihood at the beck and call of the Firth of Forth. This subject has pushed me back into printmaking, which I love for its tactile nature, especially Lino printing.
Most of my research takes place on long walks along the Scottish coast. Beach combing is a much loved hobby of mine and I take inspiration from all that I find, from broken pottery, sea glass and driftwood to old bits of rope. Each piece has its own story and that’s something I want to reflect on more within my work.