Hello, I'm Lesley

My love for printmaking began years ago at a workshop with Northern Print. What started as simple curiosity sparked something that quickly became essential to how I work and think.

My architectural training had already taught me to read places differently, to notice structure and spatial relationships, to understand how layers create character. But printmaking gave me a way to translate those observations into marks, textures, and atmospheres that could hold the essence of a moment: the windswept character of a Donegal cottage, the linear rhythm of contemporary architecture against historic ships, the ancient resilience held within a single ginkgo leaf.

Each technique I work with offers different expressive possibilities. Drypoint creates atmospheric, gestural marks where the burr holds velvety blacks. Linocut gives bold, graphic clarity. Monoprint allows for spontaneity and surprise. Chine-collé adds translucent colour that floats beneath inscribed detail. Cold wax builds luminous layers that glow from within. The choice of technique becomes part of interpretation itself, shaping how I capture what I observe.

My process always begins with observation. I sketch on location, photograph, collect fragments: a particular quality of light on stone, the texture of rough grassland, the way village lights puncture darkness across water. These encounters become starting points for prints that move between illustration and abstraction, between the recognisable and the atmospheric.

Through printmaking workshops with students and community groups, I've discovered another kind of joy: watching people transform their own observations into printed images, seeing that moment when someone pulls their first successful print, helping them discover their creative voice through the tactile, immediate magic of the press.

Alongside my landscape and architectural prints, I create commemorative pieces that remind me printmaking can hold what matters most: translating love, loss, and joy into something tangible and lasting. Whether it's a cherished pet, a celebration, or a memory of someone gone, these commissions are about preserving what feels worth remembering.

What began as curiosity at Northern Print has become a practice that spans illustration and abstraction, observation and interpretation, personal work and collaborative teaching. Through patient layering, scraping, and mark-making, I translate experiences into printed images that hold moments, tell stories, and preserve what we don't want to forget.