Flora McLachlan

Printmaker

©Alun Callender

Venturing into unruly imagination

Flora's printmaking process is heavily inspired by the natural surroundings near her workshop
She slowly builds images from her imagination and creates chaotic textures and impressions
Her work involves constant making and unmaking before coming to life

Flora McLachlan is a printmaker whose fantastical etching takes place on different types of artistic mediums. Starting with a loose scrawly sketch on paper, Flora draws up mythical images from her mind’s eye. Her works are fluid and undergo various metamorphoses along with her materials and mordants. Her reflective process is slow and often involves a lot of scraping out and sanding back before the piece reaches a state of balance. "To make my etchings and prints, I aim to depict the way a dream works, how things can flow into one another and create non-linear stories," she says. Flora's art leaves room for the viewer to add their imagination to the meaning of the work. She creates her prints in her workshop in West Wales, which sits in the shadow of the Preseli hills beside a wild moor, surrounded by intense natural beauty.

Interview

©Alun Callender

©Alun Callender

Where did you learn your craft?: While I was studying for a postgrad diploma in illustration, I was taught how to etch completely by chance by friendly printmaking tutors. After that, I joined the print co-op in town and carried on exploring and taking courses related to the craft.
Do you use any particular techniques for etching?: Within traditional etching and stone lithography, I enjoy experimenting with painterly mediums such as white soap ground, monotype resist and soft ground. I love making chaotic textures and scrying into them through drawing, to summon up images from the unconscious mind.
Where do you get the inspiration for your images?: My mind was formed by books. When you read, you create the world in your own head. I am forever returning to that atmosphere of imaginative journeying in my work, where the infinite creative and poetic echoes between word, image and object are honoured.
What comes first, the title or the image?: An image rises up in my mind and I go on a mission to make it real. The transition from imagination to marks in copper is not instant, it is full of uncertainty. In this chaotic cauldron, working titles and images keep changing as part of my responsive process.

Flora McLachlan is a master artisan: she began her career in 2000 and she started teaching in 2011