Printmakers: 28th August - 29th September

Twits (detail) / screen print
Dave Bain
www.davebain.com

Full-time illustrator, Dave Bain, works in a number of different traditional media, including screen-printing - often depicting vivid interpretations of wildlife. He focuses on texture, pattern and shape in his work, particular relishing the interaction of colour.

He also manages the Drawn in Bristol studio and screen-printing facilities.

Read our Artist interview here.
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Orange Hearth (detail) / screen print
Bella Barton
www.bellabarton.moonfruit.com

Bella Barton create images that explore interior living spaces, referencing modern architecture, in the use of blocks of colour to build up settings, which often venture into the uncanny. The uncanny provides a familiar knowing sensation with the intent of evoking an emotional connection to the physical and metaphorical layering of the prints.

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Wheel of Good Fortune (detail) / screen print
Carys-Ink

Carys-ink is the pseudonym of Bristol based illustrator and designer Carys Tait.

Carys has worked as a designer since 1996, and mainly works digitally for clients and agencies. In recent years, she has re-discovered screen printing and now enjoys getting ink on her hands a bit more often!

Her screen prints are generally colourful, often fuelled by ideas of optimism & good fortune and likely to incorporate a love of bikes, ‘home made’ machines, rollerskates and/or hand-drawn typography.

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Katy Christianson

Katy Christianson is a self-taught illustrator and printmaker living and working in beautiful Bristol. 
Her drawing style is detailed and intricate, mixing delicate black line drawing with complex patterns and bold flashes of colour. Having learnt screen printing through courses at Spike Island and Drawn in Bristol, Katy has been applying her illustrations to hand printed products, greetings cards and art prints. 
Katy's screen prints are most inspired by the detail of etchings, woodcuts and old letterpress prints, as well as her beloved collection of screen printed gig posters.
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Notebook Design #1 / screen print
Dawn Cooper

Dawn Cooper is a freelance illustrator, living and working in the vibrant city of Bristol.  She creates densely patterned pen drawings, which are then scanned, assembled and coloured digitally to form colourful, folky illustrations.  

Dawn also likes to experiment with screen printing, translating her designs into simple screen-printed, one of a kind stationery items, and products for the home.  She is inspired by wildlife, wild flowers, plant life and silhouetted forms, which often form the basis for these designs.

Read our Artist interview here.
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Lucy Davey

Lucy Davey has been a freelance illustrator since graduating from UWE in 2005. In that time she has created illustrations and lettering for over ninety book covers, as well as images for advertising, packaging design and magazines. She is represented by the Artworks illustration agency.

To get away from the computer Lucy likes to experiment with screen printing and she finds her love of limited colour and bold shape lends itself to the medium. Lucy learned to print at Spike Island and also Snap studio where she was a member in 2011/12.

Lucy is inspired by mid-century design, Japanese woodcut, old transport posters and American landscape photographers Carleton Watkins and Ansel Adams.

She is now a member of Drawn in Bristol studio and collective.
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Kerry Day
www.kerryday.co.uk 

Kerry Day is an mixed medi artist who concentrates her gaze on the human figure and in particular the nude. Her practice is rooted in a rigorous dedication to life drawing. 

Working in oils, acrylics, and print, her pieces are powerful and expressive and have an economy of line that is bold and unfussy.

Kerry completed a MA in Multi Disciplinary Printmaking at the University of the West of England (UWE) in 2011 and is an active member of Spike Print Studio and the North Bristol Artists.      

Click here to find out about Kerry's workshop.

Read our Artist interview here.
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Charlotte Farmer
Charlotte graduated in 2006 with an MA in communication design from Central St Martins and has been working as freelance illustrator ever since. She enjoys experimenting with different processes (screenprinting, photocopying, using carbon paper)  which encourage subtle changes from the original drawings - which often include areas of small intense detail and the odd scribble here and there. Wherever possible she tries to sneak in bits of gold and silver and flashes of fluorescent red, pink or orange.

Her subject matter often involves unexpected combinations of characters and their conversations or the sounds things make. Her very pampered cat, Margo also makes regular appearances.

Read our artist interview here.
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From Sand Point
Jolanta Grzybowska

Jolanta Grzybowska is a printmaker and member of Spike Print Studio.

She works primarily in etching, with an interest in experimenting with multiple plates to print layers of colour.

Her work is drawn from landscape and much of her current subject matter comes from walking, drawing and taking photographs in places she often returns to.
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Anna Harley

Anna Harley is a Fine Art Printmaker, member of the Society of Women Artists, and works out of Spike Print Studio in Bristol. She has a Masters Degree in Multi-Disciplinary Printmaking and lives with her family at the foothills of the Mendips, in South West England. 

Anna's work is firmly rooted within the Landscape tradition, while the fabric textures that inhabit her prints are an echo of her Scandinavian Arts and Crafts background. She builds up her screenprints in layers formed from multiple exposures of her drawings, photographs and fabric fragments to create delicate, haunting and ethereal landscape images that evoke a past world of myth and legend. 
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Oystercatchers (detail) / woodcut & linocut
Christine Howes
www.christinehowes.co.uk

Christine Howes, printmaker, specialises in natural history and landscapes. Printing at Spike Print Studio she makes Woodcuts, Linocuts and Wood engravings.

Having freelanced as an illustrator for many years she now enjoys making her own art and teaching others about print.
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Kate Ingham
www.katealexingham.tumblr.com

Kate is an illustrator and print maker who creates fictitious landscapes and playful line drawings. Her work has recently become more focused on recreating beautiful places that she has explored by bike, boat or foot. Kate works with a combination of paper stencils and original drawings, brought together through screen printing.
Her love for recreating the magic and magnitude of the outside world in small line drawing has also inspired her to explore wood cut and etching. Kate's hopes her work encourages others to take up a new craft or rekindle former creative passions.
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Helford River, Cornwall / etching
Lee Kellgren
www.lee-kellgren.co.uk

Lee Kellgren is a Bristol-based artist printmaker specializing in etching. Having originally studied an MA in computer graphics, she has chosen to return to the textures and challenges of traditional fine art printmaking- creating delicate and atmospheric original etchings which are hand-inked and handprinted in limited editions on local Somerset paper. As a member of Spike Print Studio and North Bristol Artists and West Bristol Arts, she exhibits widely in the South West of England.

She works in two contrasting techniques. The first uses traditional copper plate etching, using marks and acid with soft-ground, sugar-lift and aquatint to create prints with a painterly quality. The second technique uses ultraviolet light biting into sensitive polymer Toyobo plates to create photogravure etchings. Images are created from photographs, manipulated acetate positives, x-ray film or images drawn on translucent film. This technique creates etching prints with a delicate, other-worldly quality. The artwork is inspired by places of personal significance where she has lived or visited. Recently she has been experimenting with etching aluminium plates.
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Carrie Love

Carrie combines her lifelong passion for portraiture with a joy in the process and medium of relief printing, after moving away from conventional commissioned portrait styles. 

Her subjects are a celebration and embodiment  of the creative and pioneering spirit of inspirational women in our community.

Read our artist interview here.

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John Joseph Lynch
www.jjlynch.org

John J Lynch is a multi disciplinary printmaker graduating with a distinction in MA multidisciplinary printmaking 2012, He works across a number of printing methods and specialises in relief printing, developing his practice of experimental woodcut prints as the recipient of the Lark Trust's Peter Reddick Bursary at Spike Print studio.

Winner of the 2012 NEO: Print prize for outstanding new media in print John has produced works in Etching, enamel, screenprint, and multimedia prints mixing traditional relief printing with digital methods and flock printing. His work often conveys classical Iconic imagery in a decaying urban setting.

John teaches a number of printing methods and has his own mobile screen printing studio in which he has taught printing to schools, Charity groups, Referral units, youth groups, adults, artists and beginners.
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Chitra Merchant
www.chitra.co.uk

Chitra experiments with processes like screenprint, monoprint , hand drawn and digitally manipulated marks to arrive at images. These maybe in a series, an edition or unique images.

Drawing is integral to her work.
Much of Chitra's work draws on her Indian upbringing. This is reflected in her use of colour as metaphor and landscape as allegory.
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Sue Milestone

Sue Milestone is a Fine Art Printmaker, working in a number of different techniques and currently working out of Drawn in Bristol.  Sue graduated in Fine Art at Bath in 1995 and has gone on to develop her art practice, taking part in a variety of group shows in Bristol, Cornwall and London. 
Previously a member of The Konicus Group and Women's Art Works, Sue's work is often personal, often political and sometimes both.

Her underlying belief is that the 'role of the artist is to make visible the ideology underpinning society'  (Walter Benjamin).

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Elena Ortiz

Elena Ortiz is a spanish printmaker based in Bristol. Her work is a result of her broad knowledge across a variety of printing techniques such as photopolymer or lithography.

Elena's practice is rooted in her everyday life which she portrays through drawing and photography. Behind Elena's work you can glimpse her interest for geography, nature and those small details which make our daily life different.

Read our artist interview here.
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Houseboat
Sophie Rae
www.sophie-rae.com

Sophie Rae has a BA (Hons) degree in Illustration from The Arts University Bournemouth.

Sophie has developed her own unique way of printmaking. After sketching out her designs she carefully cuts them into stencils. Then she mixes her oil-based inks to create beautiful colours. The stencils are placed onto the paper and a roller is used to apply the ink through the gaps, gradually building up layers of shapes until the image is complete.

Often inspired by the natural landscape, she loves to travel. Her trip to India this year has inspired her most recent prints, which she made whilst artist in residence at Chhaap Printmaking Studios in Gujurat.

Click here to find out about Sophie's workshop.

Read our Artist interview here
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Karoline Rerrie

Karoline is an illustrator who creates images by hand using drawing, painting, silk screen printing and Japanese Gocco printing. She sees her work as a craft and strives to maintain a handmade element which is what initially led her to explore printmaking. Her work is subject to a wide range of influences, the main one being process of silk screen printing.

Her use of heavy lines, bold shapes, simple patterns and blocks of colour are particularly suited to the technique. She is also inspired by folk arts and crafts from around the world and Eastern Europe in particular.
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Alice Rolfe

Rolfe&Wills is a Bristol based Print and Upholstery company who are interested in creating colourful and bold designs which stand out form the norm. 
Alice Rolfe prints on to homewears, clothing, paper and fabric which Chloe Wills then uses to upholster furniture.  Alice and Chloe are influenced by layering and blending of colours during the print process - all designs are made from their own original drawings.
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Megan Scott
Megan's is mainly print based but loves using her screen prints to make sculptural installations and experimenting on resistant materials. For the past few years she has been intrigued by mirrors and the reflection of the under side of the print. This gives a three-dimensional quality to the prints and a life like quality to the birds.

Megan prints and sculpts in her studio in Bath – 44AD.

She admires Elisabeth Frink’s stunning Lioness prints and Annette Messager’s sculptures/installations.
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Catherine Volk
www.catherinevolk.com

Catherine creates her screen prints from the life drawings she produces each day. She is interested in the ebb and flow of life as well as the fragility of our society; recording the necessary, accidental, fortuitous, random, natural...

The contrast between the spontaneity of a sketch and the long process of a print is a very important part of her research. When Catherine draws, she tries not to dictate the line, but rather just lets things happening. She treats each print as a narrative, using the medium to tell a story. Against that background she develops a scenario through her screenprints, using her sketches as actors in a play.

The sketches are created using professionals models, generally actors or dancers. Each sketch is produced quickly, never exceeding 3 minutes. Recently, Catherine found her inspiration in the sketches she has done in the street or the town, accidentally. She tries to keep the spontaneity of a sketch in her prints.

Catherine has been drawing for as long as she can remember. When she was a student, she used to sketch nude models but now her work is more vibrant and flowing, showing both movement and representation of everyday life.
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Bronwyn Ward

Bronwyn is a relief print artist, working mainly with wood block prints. She studied Visual Arts in her native Australia, majoring in printmaking and combined media. She worked in visual merchandising and textile design before moving to the UK.

Bronwyn draws inspiration for her work from the native birds of the British Isles and Australia. She spends a lot of time observing birds in nature and studying their movements and behaviour. This she tries to capture in her work.
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Sophie Willoughby

Sophie is a freelance artist based in Bristol. She graduated in 2008 with a BA (Hons) Fine Art degree from the University of the West of England.

Her practice is process driven and employs printmaking and photographic methods of image making. She often favours experimental and hands-on techniques, such as the alternative photographic process of the cyanotype.

She draws inspiration from both familiar and foreign places, sometimes discovering the most interesting images come from our day to day life; noticing fresh things in a familiar background and looking at places which are generally overlooked yet finding beauty and intrigue within them.
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Other print-makers involved: 
Julie Taylor