Fida have invited me to keep a Printmaker’s Fashion Journal for the next 6 months, and share it with Fida members…which is very exciting!

How often?

I’m hoping to make at least 4 Fashion Art Prints a month to share with everyone.

The aims of my creative diary are 3-fold: Firstly to document for Fida members what interests me in fashion now. Secondly, not to try and communicate the Designer’s inspirations, but to visualise when a certain look or show connects with me. And finally, to step-up my printmaking practice using re-imagined screen shots from fashion movies and photographs. My Art is Fashion Illustration using traditional Printmaking techniques. I’m really looking forward to sharing my process in more detail with you here, and showing you why I like to illustrate through the analogue medium of printed mark-making.

I think Fashion Designers are taste-makers, and that is a very powerful thing to be in our world. We all describe our aesthetic taste to other people by what we choose to wear. I like how accessible YouTube is. I love that everyone can get a front row seat online and there is no snobbery in that space. I think my artwork starts when a fashion look makes me stop. The beginning of new work is when an image makes me look twice. I’m not a fashionista. I don’t get tickets for shows. I don’t buy Designer clothes. I am a mother-of-3 when I’m not in my studio. But l love that fashion is always in the future, and lots of it is really edgy. I like to document the exciting bits, and own my favourite pieces on paper. I prefer to draw the figure dressed, rather than undressed, and I love the shapes and pattern that fashion brings. I’m thrilled to be keeping an illustrated record for Fida over the next few months!

I draw from screen shots, mostly taken from YouTube footage and other online sites. Every screen grab is back-lit, by virtue of it being taken when my computer is ‘ON’. This has got me to thinking about other artists who work from film or photographs, artists who are also inspired by images that have an electric light. Right now I’m looking at the work of Peter Doig and Marlene Dumas (and some others too). I read that Doig wanted his work to be a ‘visual echo’ of what he was originally inspired by on-screen. That’s just a great notion to grab hold of…creating a visual echo of fashion, the same as the inspiration image, yet altered by my printmaking process. Marlene Dumas’ work is a painterly masterclass. I’m not bothered about it’s meaning so much, I just love how she paints. I like her buzzy marks, that suggest movement under the skin or around the model.

I hope you’ll follow along on this printed journey. Thank you for your eyes as always.

photo credit: Sophie Speyer RCA library