Whilst I was working towards my MA in printmaking at Plymouth College of Art, I met some lovely people who are now my friends. Some of us joined CAMP, an arts based network for Devon and Cornwall and the CAMP printmakers meet regularly at a community studio in Liskeard. At a recent meet-up, we decided to have a go with gel plate printing because none of us had ever used that process, it being fairly low-tech, and we thought it might be interesting to see how we all used it in different ways.

This month I started photographing the local allotments here in Peverell (Plymouth) but as we don’t have an allotment, I had to take them through the fence. This actually added an air of mystery and framed them quite well. From these, I made a series of mono prints; I built up layers of acrylic colour using the gel plate then used an intaglio oil based ink to make a mono print over the top, based on my glimpses through the wire fence. I also made some colour sketches which I might develop into paintings or prints.

In mid-February I signed up for a course in experimental paper making and bookbinding at Clayhill Arts centre (near Bridgewater in Somerset) which was run by Jennifer Collier over 2 days. It was a really excellent course and as I stayed there overnight - highly recommended as co-owner Deborah is a trained chef - I was able to concentrate fully on making scraps of paper and prints into something lovely. Jen showed us how to stitch into these papers and to my amazement I enjoyed the sewing part very much. I will definitely use these techniques as I often have prints which aren’t successful, being an experimental printmaker, so I can now use these to make books. Clayhill Arts is a beautiful peaceful centre and I’ll be back for more!

Deborah (co-owner of Clayhill) told me about the printmaking studio at East Quay, Watchet and the Two Rivers paper mill there so we went to stay one weekend. Watchet is a tiny coastal port on the North coast of Somerset and EastQuay is well worth a visit. We saw an exhibition and film there by Bedwyr Williams called ‘The See Wall’ which made me laugh out loud:)

We drove home via Dartmoor and called in at Moretonhampstead to visit the Green Hill Arts centre where we saw a lovely two man exhibition called ‘Form - Landscape - Shape’ by Neil Beech and Jeremy Speck; I especially enjoyed the colourful screen prints.

I was pleased to hear this week that one of my digital prints  ‘Dahlia 3’ has been chosen for the Green Hill Arts Open and I’m looking forward to seeing it in this tranquil calm space. I’d never crossed Dartmoor from north-south before so the sheer breadth of it was breathtaking to see.

Having moved to Devon, I felt it would make sense if I joined the MAKE Southwest organisation as a graduate member so here I am: https://www.crafts.org.uk/graduate-makers

Finally this month, I’ve been working towards making my work more abstract by joining Liz Hough’s courses online at St Ives School of Painting over the last year. I think these work very well as we also have an online community where we share our work and we can discuss things that have worked and those which haven’t. It saves travelling to St Ives and is a lot cheaper as a result.

Liz set us 5 tasks this month and I’ve really enjoyed working through these in black and white, using white acrylic, PVA, graphite powder, Indian ink and different weights of charcoal. Highly recommended!