Printsy Interview - Kirsten Francis

Website: www.kirstenfrancis.com
Etsy: kirstenfrancis.etsy.com
Blog: kirstenfrancisart.blogspot.com

Brief Bio
I spent my childhood in New England, Mexico City and Toronto, as well as many summers in Denmark with my mother’s family. After graduating from college with a non-art related degree, I discovered printmaking at my local community college in San Diego. I was so taken with the process that I returned to school to get a degree in printmaking.


Since then, I have been making and selling my artwork full-time (or trying to, now that I've got kids). That struggle to balance artmaking and one's 'wild side' with keeping house and home together is the driving theme behind my work. That is combined with images from my childhood, the garden outside my door and myths and fairy tales (I read way too many of those as a kid) to create narrative and fabulist artwork that's really just about my everyday life.

How did you get started in printmaking?
The art class I was signed up for had a terrible instructor. In desperation, I crashed a printmaking class held at the same time. I didn't even know what printmaking was.

Describe where you work.
I work in my home studio, which I am constantly rearranging to make it more efficient. I've got an etching press, a workbench, a dry table for paper and mat cutting and a desk where I draw and sketch.


What's your favourite printmaking process?
Reductive woodblock.

What's your creative process for any given print? (eg. sketch first? Pre-planned or free-form?)
I think, I drink coffee, procrastinate, clean the house, think and then sit down to sketch. It never works out how I envisioned it would. There is much erasing and redrawing. When I feel like I've got a decent drawing, I cut a piece of plywood to match the dimensions of the drawing. I redraw using a grid with pencil onto the plywood and then I seal it using a light coat of spray varnish. Then I carve and print, carve and print, carve and print (repeat about 8 times).


What do you enjoy most about printmaking?
That it's so hard, and long and fairly torturous. I feel like I've really earned a good result. Then there is the 'kiss of the press'. Lovely.

What's your least favorite part of the process?
That I have to explain the process over and over again. I appreciate people's curiosity but sometimes I feel that it's only the technique that justifies the artwork in their eyes. Do painters get asked about their technique so often?

What are your inspirations (other artists, people, places, events, etc.)?
Fairy tales, mythology, literature, poems, gardening, quiltmaking, my kids, animals, Aztec imagery, Kollwitz, Kahlo, Hockney, Domino magazine and other ephemera (not necessarily in that order).


How has your work changed and evolved since you started?
Technically I've improved, my color have gotten brighter and I've got more of a sense of humor about my work.

How do you get past creative slumps?
Oh geez, I'll let you know after I get through this one.

How do you promote your work?
I used to do art festivals and send out postcards and do email blasts. Now I am transitioning to the web with Etsy and a blog. I'm trying to get the hang of it.


Any other comments or advice for others who want to try making hand-pulled prints?
If you don't have access to a printmaking studio, relief printmaking is the way to go. Start small (i.e. do a card sized piece) and you'll be surprised at how quickly it goes. It can be a lot of fun (obviously, if I'm still doing it myself)!

Printsy Interview - Vanessa Kale

Website: www.vanessakale.com
Etsy: www.vanessakale.etsy.com
Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/20904650@N08/

Brief Bio
I was born in the Pacific Northwest but lived in several different places as a child, finally ending up in California. I went on to get a degree in Art Studio from UC Davis. I live in Altadena, California with my husband, Simon, and our son, Nigel.

How did you get started in printmaking?
I must have been about 9 or 10 years old when I created my first print during a summer art class. It was a linoleum carving of cherries inspired by the neighbor’s cherry tree.


Describe where you work.
I work out of my home. I have one closet in the house that is just filled with all of my art and printmaking supplies. I often print on the dining room table or the floor and typically dry my prints where ever they will fit(the floor, the clothesline if it’s sunny).

What's your favourite printmaking process?
My favorite process is carving linoleum or wood for a relief print. There is something sculptural about the process of carving. I like to see how my original drawing translates into the carving and then onto the print. I love that the final print is not the same as the drawing. And the carved wood or linoleum is so beautiful too.


What's your creative process for any given print? (eg. sketch first? Pre-planned or free-form?)
Often I take photos, then make drawings from the photos. Lately after the first test print, I sometimes scan the print in and play with color possibilities in photoshop before making my next prints (this saves on clean up time).

What do you enjoy most about printmaking?
I enjoy the way that I am never in complete control of the final product. And I don’t really know what it will look like until the end.


What's your least favorite part of the process?
Clean up after printing is a drag…especially if I have used lots of different colors.

What are your inspirations (other artists, people, places, events, etc.)?
I find the artwork of Gustave Baumann to be inspirational. There are so many colors in some of his prints, they are beautiful. I love the artwork of many contemporaries as well. I save all the McClains catalogs just for the prints they include in them. I am inspired by nature mostly, plants and flowers in my garden and in the surrounding mountains.

How has your work changed and evolved since you started?
I have more toys now then I did when I was younger. I started with one Speedball carving tool, now I have all kinds of tools. I also do different kinds of prints now. I have been experimenting with printing on fabric.


How do you get past creative slumps?
I go outside, take a walk and take my camera.


How do you promote your work?
I don’t promote it as much as I should. At the moment I mostly promote amongst friends. Every year I send out holiday cards that I have printed. I have a link to my Etsy site on facebook.

Any other comments or advice for others who want to try making hand-pulled prints?
The absolute best place to order supplies for hand printing is McClain's. I just cannot say enough good things about these people. They are helpful on the phone if you don’t know what to buy or are totally new to printing. And they have useful links and images of artist's work on their site.

Printsy Interview - Annamie Pretorius

Etsy: inugie.etsy.com
Art Fire: ThatThinLine.artfire.com
Website: www.ThatThinLine.synthasite.com
Flickr: flickr.com/photos/26552526@N06/

Brief Bio:
I live in Swords, just North of Dublin, Ireland, with my husband and three kids, aged 6 months, 4 and 5 years. Both my husband and I are South Africans. We lived and worked in the Johannesburg area for a good few years before moving to Ireland in 2002 in search of 'greener pastures'. We've settled here now, got the house, the cars, the kids and even a dog. I'm an architect and I work part time for a local County Council's Architects Department (mornings). In the afternoons I'm home with the kids, cooking dinner, cleaning the house etc. Then, after 8pm and once the kids are in bed, I'm a printmaker! It's a busy life; I wear several different 'hats' each day and love all of them (excluding cleaning!).


How did you get started in printmaking?
As a young girl my parents showed me their wedding invitations. It was a lino print, with their initials entwined in a beautiful design, done by my dad, who was an architect too. He printed all the invitations himself and was ever so proud of it. I still have a small piece of the lino he used, now dark brown and very brittle. I always liked relief prints and etchings, and as a student I started playing around with small lino and drypoint prints. In 1998 I did a short course in Graphic Art with the Arts Department of the Vaal Triangle Technicon in Klerksdorp, South Africa. This covered the basic printmaking techniques of relief, etching and collagraph. I loved it, but had little time for my new hobby. After moving to Ireland it took me 5 years to get to a point where I had the time, the money and the space to take printmaking up again. I discovered the world of the online printmaker, etsy, wetcanvas, some online art suppliers and never looked back.

Describe where you work.
I'm lucky to have a small studio in our house. There's an old door on trestles for printing and a desk for the computer and drawing, a little baby press and a homemade print-drying contraption. It's nice and warm, just big enough and within earshot of the main living area. I love working there.


What's your favourite printmaking process?
In 2007 I started doing reduction linos after reading the tutorials on Ian Phillips' website and enjoyed doing it so much that I did a workshop with him in Wales in 2008. I seem to have the right temperament for this nerve wrecking technique, as well as enough patience, logic and a rather steady hand.


Although reduction linos are my current favourite, I have been experimenting with etching (zinc and copper sulphate), drypoint, collagraph and foilograph over the past year too. I'm hoping that I may get a little better at some of these if I keep practicing. I still have so much to learn and hope to do a few more workshops and short courses over the next few years.

What's your creative process for any given print?
I normally use one of my own photos as a reference for a new print. I have hundreds of photos of boats, trees and telephone poles. I seem to be drawn to things that will give me hours of pain cutting ridiculously thin and complex lines. Browsing through these photos often ends up in a print, or I'll go out and take the photo I need for a specific print I have in mind.

I use Photoshop to simplify the reference image, change the composition as required, reduce and change the colours to generally get a feeling if it will work as a reduction lino. The simplified version is printed and transferred to the lino with carbon paper or grease pencils on tracing paper. I think this process will evolve though as I gain more confidence. I recently started a sketchbook and I hope to do a few prints without the help of photos soon.


What do you enjoy most about printmaking?
The place my mind goes while I'm cutting the lino, the way time stands still and flies simultaneously, the surprise when you lift the paper, the smell of the ink, the ritualistic inking and printing, inking and printing. It's very addictive, my little treat at the end of each day!

What's your least favourite part of the process?
Cleaning.

What are your inspirations?
I love the way a small detail of something we see every day, can be beautifully abstract. I love looking up at things, viewing it from unusual angles. I love the silhouette of trees against the sky. I love patterns and rhythms and detail. I love thin lines. My way of looking at the world has not really come out in my work yet.


How has your work changed and evolved since you started?
It has evolved from really just playing around for years, to taking it much more seriously over the past two years. I'm still experimenting and the learning curve is very steep, but I'm slowly gaining confidence and like to think that the best is yet to come.

How do you get past creative slumps?
I don't mind slumps, as I need time to do other things around the house too. So when the creative juices dry up I just don't go into my studio for a while – I know I'll get back into 'it' again. I also need times not staying up till 2am making prints! When I feel the need to print again I just browse through my old photos for inspiration. Joining print exchanges also forces me to print – there's nothing like a deadline to get me going!

How do you promote your work?
Etsy, ArtFire and my website. I recently had some Moo cards printed and will start handing them out… promise.

Any other comments or advice for others who want to try making hand-pulled prints?
Remember how we did potato prints as kids – same thing really! Read some tutorials, watch some videos, join wetcanvas and start printing. Oh, and most importantly: Fingers behind the tool!

Printsy Interview - Maria Doering

Name: Maria Doering

Website: maria-doering.com
Blog: mariadoering.blogspot.com
Etsy: mariadoering.etsy.com
Flickr: flickr.com/photos/mariadoering

Brief Bio
I was born in Germany in 1985. In May 2000 my family and I immigrated to the United States where I graduated from High School in Oakland, NJ and attended Hartford Art School as part of the University of Hartford, Hartford, CT. Fall 2005 I spent one semester studying and working in the beautiful Tuscan town Cortona in Italy. In May 2007 I graduated with Regents Honors, being in the top two of my class I left Hartford with a summa cum laude BFA in Printmaking and a Minor in Art History. Working on my MFA with a Print Media concentration I am currently enrolled at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.


How did you get started in printmaking?
I took a lithography course with Fred Wessel at Hartford Art School, and within less than a month I was converted, changed my major from Painting to Printmaking right away. It was the beginning of a beautiful obsession.

Describe where you work.
Unfortunately there is no easy answer. Since I have moved many times over the past years my workspace constantly changes. Since I am an artist not only a printmaker, I paint, draw, photograph, install, write,...etc.. And each technique has its own space and time. I tend to work wherever I go, draw on the metro ride to work, sew at a friend’s house while we watch TV. For print I do the pre and post preparation work at home or in my studio at school, and the actual printing of course happens in the Print shop at Concordia University, here in Montreal. Lately I prefer working at home.


What's your favourite printmaking process?
This is a tough question. I think Lithography was my first love and my love for drawing definitely factors into that. But I wouldn’t have the patience to work on an intricate lithograph without the fun energy of doing a reductive linocut, or without the many layers of a reductive offset monotype. I think the only print technique that I don’t get along with would be Intaglio. Maybe the print-god’s were to blame for that one, maybe it wasn’t meant to be but the worst time I had in the studios was during the two intaglio courses I took.


What's your creative process for any given print? (eg. sketch first? Pre-planned or free-form?)
This very much depends on the Print technique. When I work on a linocut for instance I work with photographs and at this stage don’t even do pre-sketches. I just transfer guidelines onto my block, and start to freely chop away as I am using the photograph as my reference. Since I have printed reductively for years I know the technique well enough to not need too much planning. I also tend to mix ALL my color inks before I even start printing. I then work from that limited palette. The large color lithographs I work on tend to develop out of my obsessive drawing / sketching/ doodling, where I develop new patterns. Then create ball grain litho plates by drawing the patterns freely with autographic ink. These full sized plates I print on our Mailaender offset press which has automatic inking rollers (the most beautiful and painfree invention ever... when it works).

What do you enjoy most about printmaking?
The endless step by step, layering, the processes, the smell of the ink, the hard physical work it requires....etc...


What's your least favorite part of the process?
Really depends on my mood and the technique. In general though I love the actual printing, and am often a bit annoyed with the preparation stages.


What are your inspirations (other artists, people, places, events, etc.)?
I draw inspiration from my everyday life, feelings, emotions, issues of identity and place, belonging, the body, health...etc. I am very much inspired by the people and events around me in my life. What I have noticed recently is that I am most productive and inspired if I stumbled over a lot of questions that I can’t find an answer to. It seems that the more questions we have the more interesting our work becomes.


How has your work changed and evolved since you started?
I loved Hartford Art School for the intense techniques I was taught there. But I do have to say that I am creating much more freely and developing my own way of doing everything and anything since I have left. I do think that it becomes very apparent in the work I am producing now, when compared with older projects. I let more mistakes happen these days and let them guide me to make more energetic work.


How do you get past creative slumps?
I believe that the best way of getting over creative slumps is to produce. No matter how crappy the work is you might end up doing, it more than likely will help you to a better place. I also believe that another good way of avoiding creative slumps is to alternate techniques. If you get stuck on a print, do some drawing or painting, or go out and take some photos. It doesn’t even need to have to do with fine arts directly. I play with my hedgehog Nuffnuff, go for a walk, cook, go to the gym, clean my studio...etc... all of that can help getting back on track.


How do you promote your work?
I would say my number one promotional tool is the internet.

Any other comments or advice for others who want to try making hand-pulled prints?
As technical as printmaking is in the end, remember that you are an artist, and really anything goes! Try to work as safe as possible, your health should be your number one priority, esp. in printmaking.

Thanks for the interview, Maria!

Printsy Interview - Sherrie York

Name: Sherrie York

Website: sherrieyork.com
Blog: brushandbaren.blogspot.com
Etsy: riosalidaart.etsy.com

Biography
I was born in the Los Angeles area, but my family moved to Colorado when I was seven and the mountain west has always felt like home. I went to college in Nebraska, where I earned a teaching degree with an “art endorsement.” (Art endorsement = Just enough knowledge to be dangerous in a classroom.) Presently I am fortunate to be living and working in a small town in the Rocky Mountains, sheltered by a rattle-y old Victorian house, challenged and cherished by the musician who shares it all with me.

How did you get started in printmaking?
You could say I got started in printmaking two or three times. The first was 25 years ago (ack!), when I took a college printmaking survey course.

From that experience I learned to love etching and collagraphy, but after college I didn’t have access either to a press or to landlords who looked kindly on nitric acid baths in the kitchen (party-poopers.) Printmaking fell by the wayside as I focused on watercolor painting, work for environmental non-profits, and a freelance graphic design business.

Second start? Hmm... fifteen years later, when I tried my hand at reduction linocuts. I made two or three reasonable prints at that time, but didn’t have a good system for registration. The entire process was just sooooooo painful that again it went on the back burner.

But you know what they say, “Third time’s a charm.” In 2000 I made one of those ill-fated 90-degree turns and took on a job that looked perfect but turned out to be a complete fiasco. For a period of 2 or 3 years I made no art whatsoever. When the job mess was over and I had moved 150 miles away, I picked up a brush and tried to get back to painting.

Let’s just say it didn’t go well.

Completely frustrated, I decided to simplify my approach to image-making. I made a few small lino blocks and started carving strictly black and white images, pulling editions of only 4 or 6 prints ("Lakeside - Franzhurst"). I worked in small, non-threatening formats and focused on composition. It was probably close to a year before I started to work in color again, developed the registration jig I use now, and made linocuts a regular habit.

Describe where you work.
So glamorous! My “studio” has typically been the spare bedroom in whatever apartment I inhabited at the time. These days I’m still working in such a space, but I share a house with a musician and he needs a studio, too. We’ve had to expand our selection of bedrooms.

I use the same table for painting, drawing, carving, and printing, so my setup remains simple and movable. When it’s time to print I put my registration jig on one side of the table and my inking glass on the other. I pull my inks, brayer, baren, and trusty kitchen spoon out of a box and I go to work. I’ve got a nifty little clothespin-and-1x2 drying rack that can be raised and lowered on pulleys hanging from the ceiling. That’s it!

What’s your favourite printmaking process?
As I mentioned before, I loved etching but my intaglio pursuit was thwarted by logistics. I’ve become quite attached to linocuts because I can print them by hand and because they are portable. From time to time I’ll take a plate with me into the field and draw directly on it.

I think it’s the quality of a carved relief line that charms me most of all. There’s a spontaneous quality to even the most carefully rendered lines, something I struggle to achieve in my drawings but which seems to come naturally to lino.

What’s your creative process for any given print?
I’m supposed to have a process? Yikes!

The starting point can be quite variable. I’ve drawn directly on plates when I’m in the field (“And then Jeff...”) and I have transferred images from my sketchbook to plates (“Tigerlily Sleeping”). Sometimes I have an image idea in my head and I go out with camera and sketchbook to hunt down my reference (“Summer Aspen”), and sometimes I find a subject when I’m flipping through my photo files (“High Tide Detritus”).

Once I have an image in mind I am quite impatient to start carving, so the planning stage tends to be skipped entirely. If I’m working on a multi-color reduction print I usually have an idea of what the first carving should be and what the last one might be, but all the colors in between? It’s a mystery that I like to let unfold. I almost always work from light to dark, so I find it easy to think one step at a time. I print the first color and as I’m carving for the next I ask myself “Does this section want to be the color I already printed, or something else?” If it’s the former, then I carve it out. Otherwise it stays put and I avoid making a decision until the next color.

What do you enjoy most about printmaking?
It’s satisfying to see a drying rack full of successful images, but the act of carving is really what it’s all about for me. Some years ago a well-known bronze artist suggested (tentatively, because he “didn’t want the competition”) that I was at heart a sculptor. At the time the idea filled me with terror, but I think now that he recognized a certain “tactile romance,” a need to manipulate surfaces.
What’s your least favorite part of the process?
Printing! I know, I know, it sounds so wrong, but it’s true. These days I challenge myself to produce editions of at least 12-15 prints, but I would probably be perfectly happy making editions of 6 or fewer. It’s the carving and unfolding of the image that intrigues me more than the capacity for repetition. I want to see the fully-realized image as soon as possible so I can get on to the next one!

What are your inspirations?
A pencil, chickens, and a man named Richard.

Richard Wiegmann took me to the garden to draw trees and to the neighbors’ to draw chickens, and he was the instructor for that college printmaking course oh-so-long ago. He planted the seed.

Other inspirations include printmakers Gustave Baumann, Andrew Haslen, and Siemen Dykstra. For drop-dead gorgeous composition and glorious line you can’t go wrong with Francis Lee Jaques or Denis Clavreul.

And it’s probably obvious that, for me, the greatest source of wonder and inspiration is the natural world.

How has your work changed and evolved since you started?
Certainly opening up a limited color palette has done a lot to help me develop my craft. Although I’ve confessed to starting out without a plan each time, I am more thoughtful throughout the process when I am considering questions of color and value.

It’s a curious time to ask me this question, actually, as I’ve got that snake-about-to-shed-too-tight-skin feeling. You know what I mean... a certain restlessness and discomfort that usually means I’m stretching out of my comfort zone. Or that I need to start doing so. Check back with me in another month or so.

How do you get past creative slumps?
Very poorly, with much whining and complaining and general malaise. I need lots of walks in the countryside, a stack of books, and often a complete change of perspective. I live in a small town (5700 people) 2 hours from any large city, which is fabulous unless I want to see work by people I don’t already know! The web is good for some visual inspiration, but nothing beats seeing the work of others firsthand. Getting unstuck from a serious slump almost always requires a road trip.

How do you promote your work?
I have a website, blog, and Etsy store. I also try to schedule two or three solo exhibitions each year and enter three or four juried shows. I teach field sketching, printmaking, and journal-making workshops and send a semi-regular newsletter to clients, collectors and friends.

Any other comments or advice for others who want to try making hand-pulled prints?
At the risk of copyright infringement, I’d say to just do it! Linocuts are such an easy way to explore printmaking. They require few materials and equipment, and most people are familiar with them at least in theory. Even if you weren’t the kid who carved designs and scandalous words into her Pink Pearl eraser, you watched someone else do it. Really, they’re just glorified rubber stamps. Or maybe upscale potato prints. And how scary is a potato?

Thanks Sherrie for the great interview!!

Printsy Interview - Mariann Johansen-Ellis

Interview by janallsopp

Your door to all my online sites: www.artcanbefun.com
Both my etsy shops: www.mariannjohansenellis.etsy.com
and www.oneline.etsy.com
for original paintings and larger prints:
www.MariannJohansen-Ellis.com
my blog: mariann-johansen-ellis.blogspot.com
my Flickr photostream:
www.flickr.com/photos/mariannjohansen-ellis/

Hello all Printsy members... and all other visitors to the Printsy blog!

My name is Mariann Johansen-Ellis, I was born In Denmark, but have not lived there since I was a child. I call Southern Spain my home, although right now I share my time between Spain and Singapore, where both my husband and I work for the moment. We are almost finished though with our new house, including my HUGE studio, in the beautiful countryside just south of Granada... soon we will be back full time in Spain and I will start up printmaking courses (more about that at www.artcanbefun.com).

I am delighted to be a printmaker... although I have no formal education, (believe it or not, I started out as an estate agent!!) I have been lucky enough to have a great printmaker as a friend, Mary Eisman, who introduced me to etching. In my family, we have always been creative, but in a more craft oriented fashion, so my art career really started out by making all kinds of stuff in wood and then decorating it. I loved the whole carpentry bit, and I think this is why I find printmaking so fun. I really enjoy the preparation of plates, the whole “tool” process that comes before you get started so to speak, it’s like meditating, giving me space to think about ideas, images etc. I rarely, well, never actually work from anything but my imagination. Which is probably the reason it all looks a bit wonky. I just don’t seem to be able to concentrate on a model or a still life... my images are usually there as soon as I “look inwards” and the more I work, the more images there are. I do art to feel my best, but don’t have to feel my best to do art!

I tend to do mostly etchings; even though in Singapore, as a private person you are not allowed acid in your studio, I am fortunate to have a second studio in Spain. I also taught printmaking at Singapore Tyler Print Institute for a while and they very kindly let me use their acid room, with a huge bath!!

I have to say though, that lino is probably the printmaking form I feel is made for me. I love reduction printing, although there can be some, mild of course, swear words, over registration (if you have ever tried a lino reduction you will know I am lying through my teeth about the language) but it is still great fun, and a real challenge.

I have two printmaking movies on Youtube, one that explains and shows how an etching is made and printed, and one that shows a lino reduction being cut and printed. Just search under my name.

In Singapore I work in my studio at home, as we are renting a house, this really translates to the spare bedroom, which is fine, but at this stage in my career, quite limiting… so I am looking forward to my (first) purpose built studio that is included in our new house in Spain, not only is it huge. It also has the most amazing “air” or vibe. I just know that I am going to do great work there. And I look forward to teaching as well, I’ll run printmaking courses in both spring and autumn. I discovered teaching in Singapore, and found that it is so inspirational, just so much fun showing, sharing and seeing how different people use information and the same copperplate... amazing results come out!! There is also something about printmaking that is so great for first timers... it’s something to do with the finished look a print has, I am sure fellow printmakers know what I am talking about, and if you are not a printmaker, then do a course... it’ll change your life!

Although it is easy to be put off by the process of printmaking, it is no more difficult than brushes and oil paint for example. Where with brush and paint you see the result as it grows, printmaking is a different creature. It will lurk, peep, tease and “torture” until you finally pull that first print, it can be a triumph, or a slow moan... you just never know. It’s funny; the plate does not tell you the whole story until the print is on the paper!

Most of my etchings are done à la poupée: this means that I ink up all the colours on the plate, with big plates this means that inking can take a long time, and then I print the plate, repeating the inking for each print. Doing all the colours like that, also means that each print will have small differences from one to the next. I am not particularily concerned about the edition being as similar as possible, I often change colours of single things, or all of it if I feel like it. For me it adds to the ‘original’ in the original print, the knowledge that the artist had a direct hands on involvement in each image.

My editions are short, rarely over 40 prints. It just gets to boring for me as an artist to print too many prints of one plate, and as I am a prolific worker, there is no need either.

I get inspired by daily events, most of the time, small things, something I read in the newspaper, or hear about from friends, it can be difficult to trace inspirations, even for me. A lot of the time the image is just there in my head.

Almost all of my work is whimsical. I do try, quite consciously to be “funny”, that’s my contribution to a happier world. A lot of my work is considered to be for children, and although I sometimes do cater to that in the name of paying my bills, it is not a conscious choice most of the time. I actually started out entertaining my little sister; most images are in ways done for her, for us to have a giggle at!

I have started something new very recently though, and show it on my Oneline Etsy shop, the prints there are somewhat more serious in content, more adult. I am not sure where it is heading yet… it’ll go where it goes, I am enjoying though, doing something new.

My way of getting over slumps though, is really called self discipline. Can’t think of anything to do? There is always printing to be done. I enjoy quite a successful career as an artist and work with several shops and a gallery in Singapore, and have recently added a gallery in Brisbane to my list and they are always asking for MORE. There is simply not much opportunity for me to have a slump!

I don’t feel very precious about being an artist. I am just deeply grateful that I can wake up every morning and go to my studio and work, as there is nothing I would rather do. I always thought that a good way to promote yourself is to take what you do seriously, even though it can be hard to make a living as an artist, get out there. My recipe for being an artist full time: a big cup of reasonable price, a large dollop of common sense, as in, could I maybe make something that more people would want, and a good spoonful of being open to new opportunities. I found for example that illustrating some children’s books opened my work up to a whole new group of people.

If I have one piece of advice for anyone thinking about venturing into printmaking... buying my etching press was not only the most sound investment I ever made in my artist career, it also opened up whole new ways of doing art for me.