Blue Quartet, Limited Edition 2 of 5 Print

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 way I think about colour and I admire the work of Ellsworth Kelly, Marc Vaux and graphic designer Jean Widmer amongst others.