I’m a printmaker and illustrator based in Shoreham-by-Sea near Brighton, Sussex with a passion for the natural environment and history. I’ve undertaken a wide range of commissions from cover designs, posters, jigsaw puzzles and greeting cards to large scale murals, banners, maps and way-finding monoliths. I’m a member of the Adur Art Collective and also Shoreham Art Gallery, which is run by twenty local artists and where you can see my prints, paintings and cards throughout the year. 

 

My interest in printmaking started very early as a child studying the detailed wood engravings by Polish artist Pawel Steller sent by the artist to our family each year from Poland. In awe of his intricately cut lines to create old faces, coal mines and landscapes with amazing qualities of light and dark, as well as the emotions conveyed. I started printmaking at school when a visiting American Artist/Printmaker Barbara Newcomb encouraged me to screen print.  As an art student I discovered Print Rooms were really exciting places to work and experimented with lithography, etching, relief and screen printing. I was very fortunate to have had some great printmaking tutors, particularly etcher John Brunsdon at St Albans School of Art and Ann d’Arcy Hughes & Terry Gravett, printmakers at Brighton Polytechnic. Apart from Letterpress, printmaking was considered too “Fine Arty” for Graphic Design students at Canterbury College of Art but at any opportunity I would go down to their print room to develop screen prints and etchings for illustration assignments. When I began teaching I wanted students to be able to experience a variety of printmaking processes and discover what is so special about printmaking.  Although now known mostly for my linocut prints I have continued to experiment with other print mediums often combined with mixed media. I’ve also been developing more ideas with painting, exploring different marks and surfaces. And of course I’m always drawing which helps with everything I do.

 

My small studio at home has a large Bewick & Wilson etching press on which I can print etchings, monoprints and collagraphs. For printing lino and woodblocks I have a Blueboy relief press but hand-burnish small wood engravings with a trusty old spoon! I mostly use TN Lawrence’s and Hawthorn’s printing inks and print on a range of acid-free printmaking papers.  Some work also incorporates collaged papers, chine colle and mixed media. My screen prints are produced using different screens and stencils and use Golden and other acrylic inks with printing medium to create bright, lightfast prints. I have used the open access studio at BIP in Brighton, with their wonderful Columbian press, to print some of my larger lino blocks.