Print makers: 24 July - 25 Aug

Blue Tit / 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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Elaine Cooper
www.washiartist.com

Elaine Cooper learned the ancient craft of papermaking from Japanese masters in an apprenticeship that lasted over 10 years. Now an international artist and Master Papermaker in her own right, she is renowned as a world expert on handmade paper and a leading exponent of its innovative use in art and design. Her exquisite handmade papers provide the perfect medium for her detailed fine art; her creations have an extraordinary resonance, beauty and depth, and her prints and paintings on multi-layered stained glass papers are, quite simply, unique. The artist undertakes commissions and has created interior screens and light fittings, other works are formed from hundreds of layers of silk paper where image, texture, and tone harmonise to produce compositions that draw the viewers gaze and captivate the imagination.

The artist also supplies specialist handmade washi papers and Japanese manufactured paper for artists, interior designers and the fashion industry

Elaine divides her time between the UK and Japan and does much to promote papermaking on a national and international level. She was awarded a Commendation by the Japanese Ambassador in 2002 for her contribution to Anglo-Japanese relations.

Elaine will be running a master class on paper making from The Print Shop,  Shade and Shadow the Power of Paper. Email us at printshopbristol@gmail.com to book your place.

Read our Artist interview here.
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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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Amber Elise

Amber Elise works as an independant illustrator and screen printer. She has a playful style with a passion for bright colours, bold images and quirky illustrations. 
She uses pen and ink to create her images, then brings them to life through the silk screen. Amber also curates a monthly exhibition for local artists and teaches screen printing workshops.

Read our Artist interview here.
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Morzine (detail) / silkscreen
Holly Drewett
www.hollydrewett.com 
Holly prints using a variety of techniques including etching, silk-screen, lithography, lino and wood cut. She has a fascination with the different qualities of print and how they can work in conjunction.

The starting point for her work comes from an interest in landscape, both rural and urban, she aims to generate an impression of a place, deconstructing source imagery to create something new. Holly documents places through drawing and photography to start the process, then abstract sections are used to regenerate pieces, sometimes using digital techniques. All prints are then printed by hand.

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Kwabena (detail)  / engraving
Ben Goodman

Since visiting an exhibition at The Ikon Gallery of Thomas Bewick’s work, Ben has become increasingly focused on wood engraving. He now lives and prints in Bristol, where he has a studio equipped with an 1875 Albion Printing Press.

A theme running throughout his personal work is a sense of place and observation; always capturing a moment in time when we pause to think. Whether that be the forgotten crossroads where Robert Leroy Johnson sold his soul, or the family cat resting after a large meal. 

His work as been accepted into exhibitions such as the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition and more recently the Society of Wood Engravers 76th Annual Exhibition.

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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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Carol Jackman 

In the 1990's Carol studied Fine Art at Exeter and UWE Bristol followed by an MA in printmaking at Camberwell. She joined Bristol Printmakers in 1996 and was a founder member of the new printmaking studio's at Spike Island when they moved in 1997. She set up the screenprinting areas, ran classes, did much of the administration with Peter Reddick, and worked on editions for a number of artists with Martyn Grimmer. She has been a studio holder at Spike Island since late 1998 and a Trustee since 2010.

Carol was born in Shillong, North East India close to the Brahmaputra River. Much of her early and adult life was spent living in Asia – Borneo, Singapore, Hong Kong, India and Nepal, so much of her work has been inspired by her travels and the places where she has lived. Trips to Nepal and India inspired work that led to an exhibition on mapping in Cardiff in 2009 with Kathy Prendergast and four others.


Carol works mainly in screen printing, sometimes with hand drawn elements, etching occasionally, collagraph, painting and drawing. Sometimes she makes things difficult by printing white on off white paper, bleached out as in the Indian desert, other times full saturated colour, but she revels in both.



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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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Snow Blind 2 / screen print
Anna Marrow
www.annamarrow.com 

Anna Marrow has been making and selling screen prints since 1995. She's made work for a variety of clients including Selfridges, the Guardian and the BBC.
After completing an MA in illustration at Saint Martins, Marrow's now draws and paints as well but she still loves to print.”

She loves drawing and finds it really satisfying to create detailed and realistic characters and environments which she can then combine with elements of collage to create surprising , sometimes funny, situations which could almost happen.”

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Gail Mason


Gail Mason completed a Masters in Multidisciplinary Printmaking at the University of the West of England in 2004 with a sell out show of large colourful abstract Silkscreen Monoprints based around the idea of Emotional Landscapes.

These works being energetic, passionate and vibrant, both in their creation and effect, built up from successive layers of screen painting, stencil and scraffito, improvising using dissonance and harmony around a given theme.

She is the recipient of awards from ‘Originals’ 08 the largest National Open Printmaking show, the Autumn Open Exhibition at the Royal West of England Academy where the large abstract silkscreen monotype lightboxes were described as ' incredibly joyous, peaceful and arresting’, by Venue magazine. Most recently she was invited to become a member of the Bath Society of Artists having won the Graphic Prize at the Annual Exhibition.

Gail usually works in silkscreen producing one-off prints. She is currently exploring a painterly approach to monochrome faces, interspersed with further abstract and semi abstract explorations into the power of colour.

She is based at Spike Print Studios in Bristol where she produces work for Exhibition, Commercial Galleries and the Corporate World.

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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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Two go mad in the South Hamms / screen print
Jane Ormes

Jane Ormes is a silk screen printmaker. Her work is usually shot through with bright colour and animals in unlikely scenarios.

Primarily a printmaker, working two dimensionally, she also loves to dabble with 3D objects every now and again. She has made decorative wooden birdhouses from printed wood, cardboard printed dachshunds, and even families of wooden printed rabbits that slot together.
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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.

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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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Benny / screen print
Tess Redburn

Tess graduated from Bath last year and now works part time as an illustrator. She has also taken up painting in her spare time to try to diversify her working process. For Tess, printmaking is mainly a way to take her work off screen and allows her to get back in touch with the ‘making’ side of things.
Missing the freedom she had at university to make more handmade work, Tess has found printmaking to be a good replacement for that.

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woodcut
Maxine Relton

Maxine Relton is a full-time independent artist who explores her ideas across print, painting, photography, bookmaking and poetry. The full range can be viewed any time by arrangement at her permanent 3-floor studio gallery and working studio in the South Cotswolds, just north of Bristol.

The framed works in the Print Shop are part of an on-going series of large woodcuts which are highly autobiographical, drawn from key moments in the artist’s childhood or emerging from a highly charged present experience. By contrast, the smaller jewel-like works in the browser have been inspired by the small-group “Sketchbook Journeys to India” that the artist has been leading twice-yearly since 2009 (www.the-traveller.co.uk). These celebrate her love of India and the vibrancy and visual imagery of her journeys.

Maxine holds a First-Class BA Honours and Distinction from Camberwell College of Art and an MA from the Slade in London.  She runs a variety of creative art workshops both at home and abroad. Her work is held in private collections in many countries, has received a number of awards and been featured in various publications as well as on television.  She is an elected Academician at the Royal West of England Academy.
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Robin / screen print
Jill Spence

Jill Spence is a silk screen printmaker. Her work is of stylised animals and birds, influenced by the repeat patterns of Moorish design and the bold, geometric shapes of the art deco period, with a contemporary injection from her training as a graphic designer. 
As a relatively new printmaker, her style is evolving, and she enjoys experimenting with different textures and colour overlays. She has made greetings cards, prints and cotton bags.

Read our Artist interview here.
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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.