Sarah van Niekerk’s wood engravings belie the image of the form as stolid and serious. Her forms curve and glide, giving the sensations of being in nature – at the foot of a waterfall, or with sheep on a mountain, with the feel of the breeze, a shaft of sunlight, the scent of falling leaves. And there is often a playful quirkiness that brings a smile to the viewer’s face. Her representations may be accurate but are also highly personal responses to the world around her.

“There is a temptation with wood engraving”, she wrote “to become too meticulous, too detailed, so that the life of the original impulse is squeezed out.” Her work could never be described in that way.

Early days and training

Growing up in the Berkshire countryside, Sarah’s early childhood was spent outdoors, stomping in fields and following the seasons. When World War II seemed imminent, she sailed to Canada with her mother and brother, then travelling on by train to USA. Her father joined later, working on secret government missions. Back in England after the War, the family lived in a farm near Newbury, and Sarah (like Gertrude Hermes before her) considered a career in farming. Her main interests were riding her horse and drawing animals. Having been sent off to France to learn French and acquire some culture, she returned – age 17 – and interviewed for a place at the Slade School of Art. It was recommended that she might fit in better at the Central School of Art and Design, to focus on Illustration or Graphic Design. She was put into a Zoo Drawing class, taught by Gertrude Hermes, who then introduced her to wood engraving. Sarah was captivated. She went on to complete the school’s new Diploma in Wood Engraving.

She later wrote how she found “a positive sensual pleasure in cutting through the silky surface of the darkened block into the crisp boxwood. I loved the satisfying crunch as the scorper lifted little golden curls on its way through the wood to create light in which the composition was slowly revealed… I still delight in the rich and varies textures that can be created, the sparkling clarity of the cleared white areas and the deepest black of any print medium.”

A burgeoning career

Sarah followed her years at Central (1951-54) with a further year at the Slade, and married fellow Central student Chris van Niekerk in 1956. She had started to exhibit her wood engravings and received commissions for book illustrations, which she completed while looking after their three young children. Having purchased a press of her own, she started to produce some larger linocuts, mostly of animals, and in 1976 made a large mural commission for Kew Gardens.

Sarah first had work accepted for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1975, and showed there every year for the next 21 years. She contributed to Art in Action 1980-84 and 1987-88 and organised the ‘12 Wood Engravers’ tour of 1994-95. An active exhibitor for many years, Sarah held many solo shows across the UK and duo shows with artists including Colin See-Paynton and Anne Desmet.

While she fulfilled briefs for illustrations for publishers such as The Reader’s Digest (a Bible), the Gregynog Press and The Folio Society, Sarah always preferred to devise her own work, and remained inspired by the places she visited (holidays in Wales were a fruitful source of ideas). She liked to make lots of preliminary drawings, mapping out every area of the engraving block on paper, so that there could be a minimum amount of actual drawing on the block, allowing the freedom of the line to works its own magic.

Teacher and mentor

Alongside her own work, Sarah was a generous and dedicated teacher, inspiring students at the City Lit in London, West Dean College in Sussex, and taking over from Gertrude Hermes at the Royal Academy Schools from 1978 to 1998. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, a Royal West of England Academician, member of the Society of Wood Engravers (and its Chairman 1995-98). Over the decades of her career Sarah received many awards and her work can found in many collections, including the V&A, Ashmolean Museum, Fitzwilliam Museum, National Library of Wales, and in museums in Russia, Australia and Canada. She also has works in private collections all over the world.