This is the first volume in the new Piquant Editions VISIBILIA series of 'visual biographies'. It features 45 black-and-white wood engravings and etchings by UK painter and engraver Peter S Smith.
Peter's work is introduced by Calvin Seerveld, who gives first a short general introduction to wood engraving as an artform before looking more particularly at British wood engravers. After this background, Seerveld evaluates the particular contribution of Peter S Smith in the context of his life experience and the key people who have shaped his artistic imagination. Seerveld concludes: "It would be a mistake to hurry through these pages. Better, take time. Give these wood engravings and their quiet voice time to speak and to be heard."

“Peter’s work has always arrested me: stopping an amble down a gallery wall, making me lean into a small but fierce engraved image, startling me with a wave of recognition of strength in a drawing. The outstanding quality of the images is that each one has been executed to the best of its potential: there is no ‘style’ running through them, it is more that the general seam is one of strength. The pages of this book turn very slowly.”
Edwina Ellis, UK Engraver and Printmaker