After attending a wood engraving course run by renowned engraver Peter Reddick at the Bristol based Spike Island Printing studio, Mary started to create her own prints. Mary’s prints embody a playful sense of fun, and she considers that the highest praise is for the viewer to smile or laugh and appreciate the joy that she feels in creating the prints. In creating her work Mary carves pieces of lino to create either one or two plates which can be used to print different colours. The inked lino plate is passed through an etching press using thick, damp Somerset paper. This gives the print an embossed finish where the paper has been pressed into the lino. The direction of cutting within the lino is always important as this affects the embossed finish. Mary also etches lino using a mixture of caustic soda and wallpaper paste. Painting etching ground on lino (to block out the caustic soda effect) allows the creation of a more painterly effect and so gives a different texture to the prints. When printing Mary carefully chooses which parts of the lino plate to ink – sometimes all the plate is inked and other times only the image is inked, leaving the background embossed or textured. Experimenting with the printing of an image is one of the joys of printmaking. Printing over other material such as old book pages, old bank notes, old music and old maps adds another interesting dimension to printmaking. A combination of hand printing and using unique material in each of the prints means that no two prints are exactly the same - each print is a unique piece of art.
After attending a wood engraving course run by renowned engraver Peter Reddick at the Bristol based Spike Island Printing studio, Mary started to create her own prints.
Mary’s prints embody a playful sense of fun, and she considers that the highest praise is for the viewer to smile or laugh and appreciate the joy that she feels in creating the prints.
In creating her work Mary carves pieces of lino to create either one or two plates which can be used to print different colours. The inked lino plate is passed through an etching press using thick, damp Somerset paper. This gives the print an embossed finish where the paper has been pressed into the lino. The direction of cutting within the lino is always important as this affects the embossed finish.
Mary also etches lino using a mixture of caustic soda and wallpaper paste. Painting etching ground on lino (to block out the caustic soda effect) allows the creation of a more painterly effect and so gives a different texture to the prints.
When printing Mary carefully chooses which parts of the lino plate to ink – sometimes all the plate is inked and other times only the image is inked, leaving the background embossed or textured.
Experimenting with the printing of an image is one of the joys of printmaking.
Printing over other material such as old book pages, old bank notes, old music and old maps adds another interesting dimension to printmaking.
A combination of hand printing and using unique material in each of the prints means that no two prints are exactly the same - each print is a unique piece of art.