Making Art has always sustained me: as a child obsessed with sketching images of Queen Nefertiti; as a working mother in Scotland painting portraits of my children or as a fine art printmaker in my native East Yorkshire and here in Sussex.
I studied Art at York and obtained a place at The Ruskin School of Art in Oxford but then changed direction to follow my love of Literature to complete a Degree in English at the University of Sussex, followed by a PGCE.
I have always painted, usually portraits of my family and the landscapes in which I've lived but at the same time I've also had an appetite for the random and the strange. My work was mainly figurative but in recent years I've been happy to explore a looser and more abstract approach to image making. This process evolved partly as a consequence of my discovery of Fine Art Printmaking where the image transferred is never exactly what you expect, sometimes not what you wished for but often better than what you thought.
I've explored a range of printmaking techniques and each has its own distinct character according to the materials used and the marks made. At present I'm working on a series of reduction linos based on the Sussex countryside but my work includes etching/aquatint, collagraph, mezzotint and monprint, as well as images produced by combining techniques.
I work in my studio in Patcham, Brighton and I'm also a member of BIP-Art in Kemp Town where I am able to access their printmaking resources as well as specific expertise. My studio is always open. If you want to see much more than the images represented here, then please feel free to arrange a visit.
Studio Portrait by Cressida Murray Photography