The printmaking festival, held yearly in Ulverston, Cumbria, will have the celebrated printmaker headlining next year’s festival.
With a career spanning four decades, Ms Desmet first started creating art as a child after developing a significant hip abnormality at just three months old, which meant she spent a lot of time in hospital.
She taught herself to draw from her hospital bed, and the small monochrome drawings she created laid the foundations for a lifelong fascination with architectural form and the changing face of the built environment.
Now based in Hackney, London, Desmet’s current work explores urban transformation.
She uses a range of techniques including wood engraving, linocuts, lithographs, digital prints, and mixed-media collages.
Her work is held in major collections worldwide, including the Ashmolean Museum, the V&A, and the Ex Libris Museum in Moscow.
She has also held more than 50 solo exhibitions.
Ms Desmet became the third wood engraver ever elected to the Royal Academy of Arts.
She is also a member of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, the Society of Wood Engravers, and the Art Workers’ Guild.
She has won more than 40 international awards, including a Rome Scholarship in Printmaking, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award, and the London Original Print Fair Prize at the RA Summer Exhibition.
Speaking about her appointment as Printfest’s Printmaker of the Year, she said: “It’s been a pleasure to watch this event develop and grow over the years, and it will be a joy to be directly involved in it, in 2026, as Printfest’s Printmaker of the Year.”
Alyson Dickson, Printfest chair, said: “I am delighted Anne has accepted Printfest’s invitation to be our Printmaker of the Year.
“Anne has recently stayed in Ulverston, spending time touring the local area for inspiration for her Printfest commissioned print – we are all excited to see what she will produce and are looking forward to welcoming her to Printfest.”
She is set to open a solo exhibition, ‘Building without Barriers,’ at Escher in the Palace Museum, The Hague, and is also expected to publish a new book, ‘Wood Engraving – A Personal Approach,’ in winter this year.
The festival has been a part of the British printmaking calendar since it was founded in 2001 and provides a space for artists, collectors, and the public to meet, learn and find inspiration.
