LAKE PIGMENTS

In 2021, my family and I relocated from town to countryside, taking on the long-term restoration of a former hostel building alongside an adjoining workshop space. This move marked a significant shift both in our way of life and in my artistic practice. Now living between expansive forest and the River Tay, immersion in the natural environment has become an everyday experience and a continual source of influence.

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Returning gradually to printmaking while raising my young children, I found myself newly attentive to the materials and processes I was using, particularly their environmental impact. This prompted a growing desire to align my practice more closely with my surroundings, both conceptually and materially. I became increasingly interested in how colour, ink, and process might be derived from place rather than imported into it.

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In 2024, I undertook my first experiments in creating lake pigments, with the aim of producing inks for use in relief and letterpress printing. While these early tests met with mixed results, the process itself proved formative, opening up new questions and a deeper curiosity around pigment making and material knowledge. Balancing family life alongside the demands of running a client-based print studio has inevitably limited the time available for this research, but the slow pace of both our home restoration and this line of enquiry has very much reinforced the value of gradual and considered change.

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At the end of 2025, I was fortunate to be awarded a VACMA bursary from Creative Scotland, which will support the continued development of my research into pigment-making for use within my printmaking practice.