Terence Gravett ARE

While I studied painting, my interest in printmaking began to develop, and was stimulated by Robert Austin and my time learning about the lithographic process.

Later I became the lithographic technician at Croydon School of Art.

In the 1960’s there were many galleries and other outlets for printmakers. Many artists engaged in what was then the fashionable art-form of printmaking, especially that of screenprinting. I built my own screen table and began to sell through Gorner and Millard and William Weston, and to show in international open exhibitions.

In 1972 I became technician responsible for developing screen printing at Brighton College of Art. I began making more figurative works and showing them at Bradford Print Biennale in ’72-’84-’90. For many years my subject matter had been influenced by an interest in classical Roman/Greek archaeology, using sites that I had photographed and drawn in Libya, Italy and Turkey. These figurative works continued after I left Brighton to take up a full time Print Residency at Belfast Print Workshop. My images began to be of an organic nature and more abstract in style, and developed a stronger use of colour. My work gradually became more abstract but was loosely based on plant forms. The present work is also based on organic growth but the titles (well known British gardens) are not a literal description, but only a means of identification of one from another.

I no longer have access to screen equipment or a press, so my images are now made by cutting thin MDF board with a very fine fret saw blade into jig-saw pieces that fit perfectly in registration to one another, and can be carefully burnished onto paper in a variety of overprinted colours.