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.
I was privileged to join Falmouth School of Art in 1986 as one of less than three hundred students, the last year before the government forced the process of amalgamation and expansion that culminated in the Falmouth University of today. Continuing on to study printmaking at Wimbledon School Art (now part of University of the Arts London), I received my MA in 1994.
Experiencing mysterious lethargy and anxiety problems, an art career did not materialise. I gained varied experience in a range of ancillary level jobs. Diagnosed with a severe mental illness in 2003 I was told I would need to take antipsychotic medication for the rest of my life. Redundancy from a sales assistant role in 2009 cemented my determination to take advantage of every opportunity to make art presented.
I found support at Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust arts therapies department, Creative Response, Richmond Fellowship – Art Matters, The Lightbox’s Landscapes of the Mind project, Ochre Print Studio and Outside In at Pallant House Gallery. I attended Outside In’s Step Up Workshop and Researching Collections programmes, later training to be an ambassador for the organisation (in 2022 all the Outside In ambassadors were awarded the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service in the late queen’s final New Year Honours).
Continuing fatigue problems resulted in my GP arranging tests, including the iron panel for possible anaemia. Instead of my iron being low, it was many times above the normal level. DNA testing confirmed Genetic Haemochromatosis in 2013. My iron level was returned to normal after the weekly removal of a unit of blood for a total of 22 weeks (2 bodies full!).
This June marks the second anniversary of my freedom from antipsychotic medication and the first from all psychiatric medication and treatment.
ART MATTERS!
Artist / Printmaker working from her studio in the Surrey Hills.
Suzi’s interests lie in human expression and how we communicate. We do this through our movement and in our stillness, through the things we build and the words we leave behind.
The possibilities for exploring this in the realm of Printmaking are endless and for her, they are anchored in the process of Drypoint and inspired by a limited colour palette, dominated by the warmth of Burnt Umber and Payne’s Grey. The latter, the painter George Shaw intuitively described as “ the colour of English rain”.
She is thankful to her fellow Printmakers at Ochre Print Studio for their inspiration and support.
Emmett is a linocut printmaker, working in Oxford. Initially trained in 3D dimensional design, he has worked within graphic & software design/illustration, then moved into exterior & landscaping design over the last decade. His more recent outdoor work utilised architecture steel forms and structures, influenced by modern architecture and large-scale minimalist sculpture.
In his printmaking, he explores architecture within our environment. He is inspired with bold architectural forms and details, finding these not only in larger more obvious structures, but also the details within the mundane, everyday. Many buildings and places are more obviously designed to capture our attention, but there are details on some buildings and structures that otherwise blend into the background. He enjoys finding the geometric forms and shapes within these environments. The encroachment of functional civil engineering structures into our landscape also interests him with the contrast of nature.
Alison graduated from St Martins School of Art in 1983 and has worked with art in a myriad of ways since as a painter/printmaker as well as teaching in Adult Education in Surrey and using art in her counselling practice and with young offenders. More recently this has extended to arts mentoring and supporting people with mental illness through making art.
Presently her art practise is focused on printmaking, Alison is a keyholder member of Ochre Print Studio where she continues to enjoy making etchings, monoprints and collagraphs. She is drawn to both urban and rural landscape, though the natural world is always her biggest inspiration.
Shawn focuses mainly on drawing, but sometimes paints with oils, acrylic or watercolour, but the bulk of his practice is focused on original drawings. These are then photographed and manipulated, some of these digitally, to make new work, with the final giclée print process creating fine art prints.
His ‘Universally speaking’ series comprises ten original A3 graphite drawings on paper, and a collection of A3 and A2 prints.
All the work comes directly from his original hand drawn pieces
Themes/Style:
The themes in Shawn’s work are broad in scope, drawing inspiration from symbology, ancient history, mythology, religion and science.
His style blends architectural lines and geometries, with natural shapes and forms, creating intricate works of fine art.
Shawn Randall –
‘For me, symbols are a language, they transcend cultural barriers and allow me to communicate with a global audience. I like to think I produce aesthetically pleasing work, but there is always an undertone: a spikiness, a shadow or some awkward, organic form. Nothing is ever truly perfect, and I play with this tension’.
Shawn’s fine prints are handled by Otters Pool Studio www.otterspoolstudio.co.uk
David re-discovered printmaking at Ochre Print Studio in Guildford after many years away from artistic activities . David has found printmaking to be a natural home: inspired by the processes, the materials and the camaraderie it imbues. He enjoys exploring the mark making of printing and the effects and worlds one can create from these. The unexpected results the process can sometimes present enhance the challenge and opportunities for creativity. Excited to keep learning, he wants to weave together different forms of printmaking to explore their contrasts and cohesiveness.
Although his work has an illustrative basis, rather than focusing on narrative it explores the relationship between character, emotion and space. He likes to invite the viewer to question what they are seeing whilst recognising objects, actions or their suggestion.
His inspiration comes from a wide variety of sources: mythology, legends, literature, photojournalism and artificial intelligence. Film theory and in particular the practices and conventions of early silent film are key interests. Many of the exponents of early film looked to paintings to inspire their work and so it seems natural to use their films and their artistic thinking to inspire his prints.
Mai studied graphic design at the College of Art, Nihon University, in Tokyo, and after graduating she joined a TV and Theatre Design Company and became a Production Designer. She has a particular passion for architecture, picked up from her early years watching her architect father at work, and designing different buildings for the stage was a dream job for her. Being trained as a set designer, important aspects of her work are ‘light’ and ‘dimensions’ with which she creates a scene without actors and on to which the viewer can project their own stories and imagination.
Since moving to the UK her enthusiasm for architecture, particularly old buildings, has grown and she took time out to write a book a book on British Church Architecture for the Japanese market using her own watercolour drawings, which was published in 2012.
She has always been fascinated by the old stone building of this country and started to draw them as a way of studying ancient buildings closely, she wanted to know what it must have been like to be a mason or an architect. Drawing is too easy a way to explore the complex process that masons had to go through as they struggled to create such wonderful works in stone. The physical process of creating a perfect print is as much a challenge for a printmaker. Because of this she finds printmaking much more satisfying.
Since Mai became Artist-in-Residence at Ochre Print Studio, she has been concentrating on an innovative safer etching process using the studio’s exclusive new facilities. This process creates exactly the affect she is looking for both in drawing and sculpture and is the perfect technique for an ongoing project she started a few years ago. Great British Architecture series of prints celebrating the architectural treasures she has visited and been inspired by during her travels around the British Isles with her husband, Christopher Winn, illustrating his ‘I Never Knew That’ book series.
