Ian Scaife

I am a printmaker interested in exploring the interplay between shape and colour. I tend to work mainly in screen print which I like for the scale which it allows, though I find block prints occasionally interesting to work in as it encourages a different way of exploring my ideas

My screen prints are made using paper stencils, which effectively means that the editions are very small - 10 to 15 prints is about maximum before the moisture in the ink begins to break the stencil down. The stencils are cut from newsprint using a scalpel; a process I enjoy and which which I think of as a means of drawing by cutting into the paper.

Ideas for a print usually begin with making drawings, either in my sketchbook or on any scraps of paper that come to hand. I aim to find a combination of shapes or a means of combining areas of colour that I find engaging, and which allows further exploration of colour combinations and harmonies. I will often begin to think about the colour by writing on my sketches, then from there I use cut-out sheets of painted paper to arrange and finalise a composition, a process which can be quite short but which often takes several days.

The writings of Johannes Itten and Josef Albers are influences on the wa...

Educated at Goldsmiths College and Liverpool College of Art.

2021 Sculpture Lounge Summer Show, Holmbridge Mill, Holmfirth
2017 'Lasting Impressions' Selected work from the Printmakers Council, Scarborough Art Gallery
2017 'Pushing Boundaries' Dunamaise Arts Centre, Dunamaise, Ireland
2016 'Pushing Boundaries' Farmleigh Gallery, Farmleigh, Ireland
2016 'In Two Parts - Part Two', Lombard Street Gallery, Margate
2016 'Festival of Print' East London Printmakers at Mile End Pavilion, London E3
2016 'A New Home', Mile End Pavilion, London E3
2015 'Original Prints', Vintners Studios, Streatham, London SW16
2015 'East London Printmakers Box Set Exhibition', Xylonite Arts, 12 Winchester Road, London E4
2015 'Works on Paper', Barbican, London EC2
2014 'East London Printmakers' Embassy Tea Gallery, London SE1
2014 'CMYK' Pie Factory, Margate
2014 'Bainbridge Open' Embassy Tea Gallery, London SE1
2014 'Freshly Pressed' Crafts Council Gallery, London
2013 'Offline Art Fair' Embassy Tea Gallery, London SE1
2013 Printmakers Council Show at Highgate Scientific Institute
2013 Art House Co-op Print Exchange. New York and San Francisco
2013 'Going Underground' East London Printmakers at Shoreditch Town Hall, Hoxton
2013 'Bainbridge Open' Embassy Tea Gallery, London SE1
2012 ‘Printathon 201...