Susi Alcock

Susi started her printmaking obsession about 8 years ago and has now included experimenting with mixed media. Previously she had spent many years creating textile pieces. Pattern and texture feature a lot and she looks for these when she is out and about both in natural and man-made environments. She uses her camera to capture scenes that she finds compositionally interesting or natural forms with especially beautiful textures. She uses parts of these images as a base for her compositions – sketching until she has something she likes. Her work focuses on nature’s beauty, bleakness or quirkiness and humour - mixing layers of abstract and realism to tease out the final image.

She used lino to produce her first printed images and has been attending courses and creating her own pieces, since then using a mixture of processes such as relief (lino, woodcut and collagraph) and intaglio (monoprint and drypoint). She is fascinated by the way that using layers of colours on a plate can produce new colours and unexpected parts of the composition can become more interesting by overlaying. She never ceases to love the reveal as the paper comes away from the printed plate after it’s been rolled through a press – sometimes the piece exceeds expectations but not often enough!

Producing a printed piece combines different skills such as sketching, composing, using cutting or etching tools, preparing beautiful paper and choosing colours of ink which she finds completely absorbing and continually testing. Within the printmakers community she has found encouragement, a willingness to share advice and ideas and the feeling that it is a continual learning journey no matter how far you have already come. She has exhibited her work at the Ochre Print Studio Summer Exhibition and the Harvey Gallery as part of the Surrey Adult Education Summer Exhibition over the last couple of years.