All the Little Things — screenprinting

A gallery that has stocked my prints for a very long time is the beautiful Leeds Craft Centre and Design Gallery they have always been so supportive even when I was a fledgling artist. I remember walking past it so many years ago dragging my huge portfolio case to Leeds College of Art when I studied there. To imagine I would have my art there one day! My foundation at Leeds was such a special year. Drawing all the time, expanding my ideas of what drawing was; painting with sticks, playing with scale and venturing out and sketching. A truly wonderful...

The idea of forests as a child was tangled in fairytales for me. The woods at the back of my friend's house a place of mystery and danger. This feeling was carried into my college years due to reading Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber". These twisted versions of already dark stories set my imagination off and I filled sketchbooks with these tales. Much later I started drawing woodlands and bears; my first screen prints after a long break.  I had moved to Hebden Bridge and rather than the woods being places of trepidation they were places to calm my mind....

Well misconception is a bit harsh.. But I will delve into my memory bank of things said to me at art fairs purely to share some of my processes. No reprimands here. Here we go.. "Where do you get your designs?" This was nice as I started to imagine my print designs were so good that people thought they weren't made by human hand. I can dream anyway. So all my screen prints begin with a pen drawing, a biro in fact. With time and patience I usually get a good drawing which I then screen print. I am lucky...

It never crossed my mind to be a screen printer before my degree. I loved drawing, a bit of collage maybe, but that was it. However the print making department at Edinburgh College of Art was a very special place. It opened up a whole new world to me. I had already fallen in love with the concept of an artist's book and this was a place where I could print my primitively compiled words and illustrations. I did most of my lettering with letraset or words printed from my friends computer and then cut up and collaged, or even...