Hope

Exhibited as part of 'Time Amongst Pictures, Bruno's Dream and Other Stories - Oliver Hoffmeister and Kevin Petrie' at Northern Print from 21 January - 7 March, 2026.

This suite of etchings by Kevin Petrie is partly inspired by Iris Murdoch’s 1969 novel ‘Bruno’s Dream’ where an elderly man reflects on his life and enthusiasms, like stamps and spiders, while trying to reconcile aspects of his life and to reconnect with his estranged son. Along the way various people connect with and support him.

Kevin made two etchings of a recumbent ‘Bruno-like’ figure at a one-day Northern Print etching workshop. From this he developed several plates with various combinations and collaged (chine collé) additions over the next year. Some plates relating to other Murdoch novels and images are sometimes over printed to create ‘other stories’.

This work was shown in 2024 at Kevin’s exhibition ‘Web of Life’ at the Iris Murdoch archives at Kingston University. The prints were grouped and presented with objects from the archives.

Here, they are presented to create a linear narrative in which the Bruno’s character goes on dreamlike journey. Along the way he encounters fear, struggle, connection with others (human and non-human), memories and a flood! Despite Bruno nearing the end of life he maintains a positive and proactive attitude. The titles of these pieces are designed
to reflect this positivity.

Kevin Petrie is Professor of Creative Practice at the University of Sunderland. He studied a BA (Hons) Illustration at the University of Westminster, Harrow, where he first discovered printing onto ceramics and began exploring ideas of decoration through applying drawn images to ceramic objects. This led him to complete an MA in Ceramics and Glass at the Royal College of Art, London. There, he explored glass and combined printed drawings with glass sculpture in a series of self-portrait heads. These investigations developed into a practice-based PhD in ceramics and printmaking at the Centre for Fine Print Research, University of the West of England, Bristol. Through this research, he helped to develop and refine a patented water-based method of screenprinting onto ceramics.

Kevin completed his PhD in 1999 and began his academic career at the turn of the millennium at the University of Sunderland. He taught in the Glass and Ceramics department and was Programme Leader for the MA in Glass and Ceramics for nine years, before later becoming Head of the School of Art and Design for six years. He has also supervised and examined many practice-based PhDs, including several in printmaking. Kevin is known for his books Glass and Print (2006), Ceramic Transfer Printing (2011) and The Ceramics Reader (2017), and has written extensively on glass, ceramics and print in key journals, including Printmaking Today. His artwork is held in a number of collections, including the National Museum of Scotland, and he has been invited to teach and lecture in Germany, Denmark, Australia, Thailand, Canada and China.

In recent years, Kevin has returned to painting and drawing, and more recently to printmaking. His work has been inspired by the novels and philosophy of Dame Iris Murdoch. He first exhibited this body of work in his 2023 solo exhibition Other Journeys at Gateshead Library, which led to an invitation to design the cover of and write for The Iris Murdoch Review, as well as to participate in The Iris Murdoch Podcast series. In 2024, he presented his work at the Eleventh International Iris Murdoch Conference at the University of Chichester and held a solo exhibition at the Iris Murdoch Archives titled Web of Life – New Prints by Kevin Petrie.

Petrie’s work will feature in two forthcoming books on Murdoch by Chinese scholar Professor He Weiwen: her monograph Arts and Morals: Iris Murdoch’s Fictional World and her translation of Iris Murdoch: A Life. The Flemish literary journal Deus Ex Machina has published Petrie’s drawings in its recent ‘Murdoch’ issue. Several of his prints and a painting are now held in the Kingston University Archives and Special Collections. In 2024, Printmaking Today featured a profile on Kevin and his recent work.