Anne Desmet

Every page of this delightful little book—meticulously reproduced from the sketchbooks that the British artist Anne Desmet (born 1964) has used since her first travels to Greece in the 1980s—is soaked in Mediterranean sunshine. Desmet specializes in wood engravings, linocuts and mixed-media collages, but she also maintains an active drawing practice, at home and on holiday. Desmet’s drawings in this volume show the daily life at her Greek destinations and the bobbing fishing boats, shady streets and bright blue seas that make the Greek landscape so recognizable.

Desmet commits every detail to paper, and the book’s intimate, small-scale format emphasizes her distinctive flair for capturing the relationship between extreme foreground and distance. Colorful and atmospheric sketches in pen, wash and watercolor conjure up the unique feel of the Sporades. Desmet notes the locations of each sketch, allowing the reader to follow her from island to island across the Aegean Sea in an intimate travelogue.

This gem of a book follows the artist’s bestselling sketchbook, An Italian Journey. Like that volume, Anne Desmet: A Greek Journey offers something truly special—a glorious tour of the Greek islands through the eyes of a meticulous and precise artist.