About Claire Rumsby

My story

I live and work in the glorious English countryside on the borders of Leicestershire, Warwickshire and Northamptonshire.

I fell in love with printmaking at school studying textiles surface pattern design in a world before computer aided design. I worked with tracing paper and pencil to create a repeating pattern, hand-cut stencil and photographic screens, mixing your own ink colours and gridding up 2 metres of cloth with cotton thread and masking tape so you knew where to place your screen.

This analogue approach laid the foundation for my practise today, over 30 years later.

My inspiration

I draw inspiration from the natural world around me from the cultivated garden landscape with its beautiful blooms to the wild edges of fields and hedgerows.

Flowers and plantlife combine colour and texture in endless variety as well as having healing and symbolic meaning.

My work is rooted in observation, and I enjoy distilling the complex form of a flower into simpler shapes. I love the layering of shapes, textures and colours that come together at the last minute to create something recognisable.

My Printmaking

I work with multiple printmaking techniques, all achievable in the home studio, including lino-cut, intaglio and mono-type.

I like to blend these different techniques together to create unique pieces of art with painterly textures and bold lines. I enjoy the juxtaposition of simple graphic shapes next to complex textures and colours.

I only create small batch editions of less than 50 of each original art print. They are often variable within the edition with different textures on the backgrounds or with the addition of some drawn lines next to etched.