Printmaker Michelle Keegan is the winner of a national print-making award.
The
West Yorkshire Print Workshop, based in Mirfield, has a national following in
the art community.
Its
Flourish Award for Excellence, now in its sixth year, attracts entries from
both Yorkshire and further afield.
This
year’s winner Michelle Keegan, a Slade School of Art graduate, is course
co-ordinator for fine art at the Central College in Nottingham. She acquired
connections with this area when invited to be part of an art show in Barnsley
this summer to celebrate the Grand Depart of the Tour de France in Yorkshire.
But
she learned of Flourish through her membership of Printmakingonline, an
internet organisation that brings together print-makers to show their work.
Three
of her prints can currently be seen at the workshop’s gallery on Huddersfield
Road in an exhibition of short-listed artists (ending on November 15).
Part
of Michelle’s prize is use of the workshops’ studios and she is now planning to
make regular forays to Mirfield to develop her etching techniques. She will
also be staging a solo exhibition at Huddersfield Art Gallery next year –
another Flourish reward.
Michelle
describes her minimalist, monochromatic work as “abstract landscape” and says
it is influenced by her nomadic lifestyle.
“I
have lived in a lot of places,” she explained, “and my work is to do with
memory and transit between places”.
She
has been etching in black and white for 30 years and specialises in multi-plate
printing but says that winning the chance to use the print workshop’s
facilities might encourage her to try using some colour. But she’s not making
any promises.
West
Yorkshire Print Workshop is a charity and was founded in 1981 as the Kirklees
Arts Space Society. It opened to the public as a gallery space in 1984.
In
1995 it became Eastthorpe Visual Arts and adopted its present name in 2004. It
is a Regularly Funded Organisation of the Arts Council England, Yorkshire.
