MILLICENT STRAKER

All of my work is informed by, and begins with, light and colour mostly found within the environment around me. I draw mainly from the natural world and the changing textures within it. My process involves mixing inks and rolling them out onto a Perspex sheet, blending them together as I go to make sure there is no hard edge of block colour. They have to be seamless and if I’m not happy I start again. Once I’m happy I roll it through the press and hope for the best as you can’t ever really predict how it’s going to come out, which is part of the addiction I have to printmaking. 

“When making work I try not to overthink or focus too heavily on the end product as that can be restrictive and frustrating. I find, especially with printmaking, you never really know how it’s going to turn out when you peel it off the Perspex, which is part of the fun, but I do think of them as sculptural pieces and not just an image on paper.”

I visit coastlines when given the chance. The North Norfolk coast being a frequent place I go to for inspiration. It is vast with big, big skies that I'm able to photograph, draw and paint as references for when I come back to London. Leaving the landscape allows me to view the colours found within the environment in the context of memory, fading to a raw essence of emotion, strong and strange. This in turn enables me to accentuate or mute the tones I was originally interested in, thereby creating a different, more ethereal, feel to the prints I create. Ideally I'd be in nature most of the time. I tend to create prints of planes I’d like to be because I use print as a form of escapism.

I hope that people use my prints in a similar way to me as a place to escape or get lost in, a moment of peace or a second away from the beige and the grey of the city. 

Millicent Straker completed a Foundation at City and Guilds, and has an MA from Camberwell College of Art in Fine Art Printmaking. She was the winner of The Artichoke Print Workshop Award 2020. She has gone on to show in physical exhibitions such as Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair, ‘Into the Night’ at Watts Contemporary Gallery and ‘Works on Paper ’ held online by Blue Shop cottage. Her work is held in private collections in the UK and internationally.