Photopolymer Printmaking

 More experiments with photopolymer KM73 intaglio plates

Photopolymer Printmaking 2025/2026

 I am delighted to have been awarded a grant from the Lucy Philips Arts fund to undertake a collaboration with Leicester Print Workshop, exploring solar plate printmaking in response to the Suzanne Balkanyi archive housed at Leicester Print Workshop.

The project aims to understand how digital intervention can alter, enhance, or reinterpret the qualities inherent in analogue etching while maintaining the tactile and material qualities of printmaking.

This project seeks to establish a dynamic and innovative dialogue between a historical practice and modern technological advancements within printmaking. Ultimately, this project aims to bridge historical and contemporary artistic methodologies, expanding the potential for innovation within the discipline. 

Printmaking

 It's been a while since my last post, but i'm always thinking and making prints.

 

I undertook a residency at Leicester Print Workshop working with the archive of Suzanne Balkanyi’s etching plates. It resonated strongly with the work I was developing in response to loss and memorialisation. Balkanyi’s work is highly illustrative, the selection of plates were sophisticated portraits of animals and representational landscapes.

I became intrigued by the possibility of collaborating with these physical remnants of an artist’s practice, aiming to create contemporary prints that honoured both her work and mine. I saw this as an opportunity to add new layers of meaning to the existing plates. Etching plates, in many ways, hold printmaking secrets that are seldom visible. Through this collaboration, I produced over a hundred unique prints, each one offering a new narrative and distinct abstract imagery, all derived from Balkanyi’s original plates without causing any damage to the etching plates themselves. 

I stopped looking at the pictures on the plates but looked at the lines. Printmakers are obsessed with lines, for etchers many of our plates are made from so many lines. We ask technical questions of our lines; will they hold ink well? Are they deep enough? I selected lines, a lot of them. I thought about the lines a lot. What if I added to Suzanne’s lines, what if I disrupted her lines? 

Our lines were made in different countries, different times and we have different lineage. In today’s ever unstable world my approach was to respect and tread lightly not to run roughshod over Suzanne’s lines but realign and recalibrate.

These prints are unique, not part of an edition, and are printed on Fabriano Rosaspina paper, measuring 50x70 cm. Each print is available for purchase at £350, unframed.

https://www.keeganarts.co.uk/blank

https://www.leicesterprintworkshop.com/exhibitions/you-will-never-know-how-happy-i-am

Gallery 57 Arundel

 

Marefair Gallery Northampton

 Delighted to be exhibiting prints with marefairgallery Northampton

marefairgallery

A beautiful print series showing at Marefair Gallery by Michelle Keegan. 
Keegan is a Printmaker and Lecturer at the University of Northampton.
“I am in Transit. I live and work in numerous places and drive up and down the motorways. It’s a liminal existence. I collect imagery when on Romney Marsh that informs a visual conversation.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/CN4xD0MJFg4/

Gallery 57 Contemporary Art Gallery Arundel.

 Delighted to be part of this exhibition so beautifully curated .

https://www.gallery57.co.uk/michelle-keegan-structured

STRUCTURED

5 December - 6 February

International Multi-disciplinary Printmaking: Artists, Concepts and Techniques

 The second edition of  IMPACT, ‘International Multi-disciplinary Printmaking: Artists, Concepts and Techniques’, is now live

And I’ve a paper in it 

https://www.impactprintmaking.com/article/i-can-still-hear-you_autumn_2020/

 

https://www.impactprintmaking.com/journals/autumn_2020/

Small Print International 6

Delighted to be part of Small Print International 6

28 November 2020 - 13 February 2021

Artists were invited to create work inspired by the first Aerogramme in 1933.

https://www.makeprints.co.uk/sp6

Photo Etching made at the University of Northampton

In response to the first Aerogramme this photo etching combines text, a honing pigeon and an aerogramme stamp.

The text, sending love from me to you, is a reflection and response to the Brexit vote and the unease within the UK with the undercurrent of anti-European, anti-Irish, and anti ‘other’ sentiment. The text is a hand of friendship, warmth and the human need for others.

The choice of stamp is reference to the aerogramme and how this airletter made the world a smaller place.

The honing pigeon is a reference to how people have needed to send messages and communicate with others for centuries.

Tutor spotlight: Michelle Keegan

West Yorkshire Print Workshop tutor spotlight 

https://wypw.org/tutor-spotlight-michelle-keegan/ 

place: soapworks space place practice

 space place practice is an artist research hub that spans the UK and internationally; we come together to create dialogues and to develop projects informed by a shared interest in notions of space, place and creative research. Our expanded practice is expressed in image word and action.

The Soapworks Exhibition, which is a collaborative project between Centre of Gravity and First Base, represents for our members an opportunity to respond to an extraordinary place and building. This collated publication has been supported through ACE funding and also The Art Research Centre, Bath Spa University.

Each member has a definitive creative practice and brings this to bear through encounters made; responding and activating their fieldwork through the spaces of imagination, architecture, histories, the real and the possible. The responses within this book raise questions around performing place, and consider an alternative model for dissemination of visual research generated through our experiences of the site.

Dr Michele Whiting

space place practice steering group
Rob Irving, Victoria Kaye, Michele Whiting

http://spaceplacepractice.com/resources.html

SPACE PLACE PRACTICE

https://www.centreofgravity.uk/spp

Delighted to be making some prints for Centre of Gravity at the Soapworks Bristol with Space Place Practice 2/10/2020 - 1/11/2020

Space Place Practice

Delighted to have become a member of Space Place Practice

http://spaceplacepractice.com/michelle-keegan.html

http://spaceplacepractice.com

Space Place Practice is a research collective, in which visual artists and multi-disciplinary researchers meet to engage with issues of space, place and site. Its dimensions are produced through interaction and critical discourse which act as points of departure for individual practice and collaborative projects.

Together we challenge and explore the interstices between embodied practice and theoretical enquiry where there is no hierarchical distinction between making, thinking, writing, and doing. Our expanded practice is expressed in image, word and action.

Regular forums are held in which we discuss and invigorate methods, theories and creative practice, building on established and more experimental notions of Space and Place, which we understand to be mutable, fragile and evasive. We consider the forum to be a creative space in which we draw inspiration from our conversations; we regularly invite other practitioners (as well as members) to share their work and also their enthusiasms in order to create other ways of making and being.

Gallery 57 Arundel Paper

Delighted to be returning with new work to the exquisite Gallery 57 with my prints titled I Can Still Hear You.
https://www.keeganarts.co.uk/sub-gallery-i-can

New Website

I'm delighted to say i have a new website
please click here

https://www.keeganarts.co.uk

Leicester Print Workshop

Looking forward to delivering a workshop at Leicester Print Workshop on Saturday 2nd November

Take a line for a walk, exploring multi plate and abstract printmaking.

https://shop.leicesterprintworkshop.com/collections/courses-at-lpw/products/191102-2nd-november-drypoint-onto-aluminium?variant=21676849070169

Contemporary Art Auction East Midlands

Delighted to be part of the Contemporary Art Auction at the Djanogly Gallery.
Auction day Saturday 12th October 1pm.

I Can Still Hear You 10 

Etching on copper

DERBY PRINT OPEN

Profile for Derby Print Open
https://www.derbyprintopen.org/printmakers/michelle-keegan?fbclid=IwAR3wKrHymPPxyCQoI2U29s9ZWyhiKb5DaEVxnOQ5kbzhPl2c-mm1Enf2BrQ

A Slade School of Art graduate, and winner of the 2014 Flourish Award for excellence in printmaking. Keegan strongly identifies with Romney Marsh, where she spent much of her childhood and adolescence, as her spiritual home, it is a place whose desolate and minimal characteristics continually ‘haunt’ the aesthetic of her work. Her artistic practice conducts conversations with the landscape and reflects on notions of belonging, identity, rootedness, liminality, and ‘home’.

Drainage dykes, sea walls, and electricity pylons are structures of modernity that traverse the flat expanses of the marshland. These act as departure points for sketches that she makes on site during her visits to the South. The drawings are then playfully distorted into overlapping layers of line and texture on zinc and copper plates. The etching process becomes one of spontaneous transcription, of feelings and memories, both familiar and elusive, which evolves as she works.

The results are intricate and complex multi-layered prints that resist literal interpretation and lack referential scale. Honouring instead a physically charged and deeply personal mapping of the environment.

Keegan is the Senior Lecturer in Printmaking at the University of Northampton and runs a print workshop in Nottingham.

Derby Print Open

Delighted to be exhibiting 3 new prints as part of the Derby Print. The exhibition showcases contemporary printmaking from artists based in the United Kingdom. A total of 82 printmakers submitted their work, and over 200 prints were shortlisted to be exhibited.

 \

7 - 29 June 2019

Launch
Fri 7th June (5pm - 8pm)
at Banks Mill Studios

71 Bridge St, Derby, DE1 3LB

Hepworth Print Fair

Delighted to be part of the Hepworth Print Fair with Staithes Studios
http://staithesstudios.com

 https://hepworthwakefield.org/whats-on/print-fair/

The Hepworth Wakefield

Gallery Walk, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, WF1 5AW

 1 - 3 March 2019, 10am - 5pm

West Yorkshire Print Workshop

Delighted to be exhibiting at West Yorkshire Print Workshop,‘In-house'

These were 2 proofs made as part of my residency exploring copper etching using ferric that led to my Drawn in the Margins series.

http://keeganarts.blogspot.com/p/gallery-drawn-in-margins_11.html

The exhibition is all about the different courses taught, celebrating the work of tutors and also showcasing work by those who have been on courses.

It’s a brilliant workshop and always a pleasure to teach and make work there.

Gallery 57 Arundel West Sussex

Delighted to be part of Gallery 57’s beautiful Winter Exhibition, Organic Form showing until February 24th in Arundel.
My new etchings are from the series Listening for the Past.
 
https://www.gallery57.co.uk/organic-form

http://keeganarts.blogspot.com/p/listening-for-past.html

Sound Mirrors at Denge

Drawing at the Sound Mirrors open day,amazing to get up close to them.

Summer School: Multi-Plate Intaglio Printmaking at West Yorkshire Print Workshop

3 day course
Friday 10th / Saturday 11th / Sunday 12th August 2018
11 – 5
£205.00

Take a line for a walk exploring multi-plate intaglio printmaking! Join artist, printmaker and 2014 Flourish printmaking award winner Michelle Keegan for an exciting 3 day summer school which will focus on exploring multi-plate printing using collagraph and drypoint technique – no etching required!

Experiment with Drypoint to make marks on aluminium plates – building up surfaces without the requirement of etching chemicals. You will use traditional scrapers and drypoint needles along with sanding and more innovative mark making approaches. Learn how to ink plates ‘a la poupée’ – a mutli-colour inking technique, and explore using transparent inks to achieve layering of colour and images. You can also experiment with the arrangement of the plates to make different compositions.

Use collagraph to build up layers of tone and line on a mount board surface, and work with a number of plates to explore mark marking and shape with this highly versatile process. You will also learn ‘chine collé’ techniques and composition and registration tricks.

Your tutor

Michelle Keegan studied Fine Art at the Kent Institute of Art and Design, graduating with first class honours. She specialised in printmaking immediately, having been intrigued by the possibilities of process, and exploring unknown ways of making marks. Michelle continued her post graduate education at the Slade School of Fine Art, under the guidance of master printmaker Stanley Jones. She has made prints and exhibited widely for the past 20 years, and also runs a small print workshop and lectures in Nottingham.

What’s included?

All course prices include basic materials such as inks, paper, tools and equipment. Other materials and printmaking papers will be available to buy during the course if you would like to try something a bit different, or take some materials home to try out.

What’s Next?

After attending this course you will be well equipped to join our workshop as a member and continue to use our facilities to make and develop your own work. The sooner the better, as the longer you leave it the more you are likely to forget! If you join up within one month of attending the course you will receive a £5 discount. Find out more about the benefits of membership here: http://www.wypw.org/shop/standard-membership/