Here are some of the prints from the printmaking workshop I attended in Nottingham on 2 June.

I really loved the process: the intensity of colour; the abstractness of it; the fact that with this method I can create the abstract images I WANT to create with colour, but find I can’t do consciously. I have been delighted with the discovery of this. I began the day with following the same techniques as standard monoprinting – with thin ink on the plate and using implements to make marks and sometimes passing the plate through a press. However in the afternoon, I started playing with thicker ink and using my hands to make the print. I also used different sizes of paper to pick up specific areas of interest – which left fascinating patterns and marks on the plate which could be picked up on ‘whole plate’ prints later on. Photographing the plate as a piece in itself was also a fascinating option.

I see the printmaking as working alongside my current paintings. They allow me to explore pure colour in ways that I am not able to in paint: the marks and combinations are much more about chance. At the moment I am fixated by my stripe paintings and printmaking is a good relief from those which warrants much deeper exploration.