Fishink at The Print Fair, The People’s History Museum

Saturday was a treat to pop into the People’s History Museum and take in the delights of the eleventh Manchester Print Fair. With over 40 artists attending and showing their work, there was a great cross-section of styles to be found. Like these beautiful lino cuts by James Green. I did love his donkeys.

A couple more from James including some Sheffield landscapes and some fetching woodland animals.

Another James working with linocuts and screen prints, was Leeds based illustrator James Bywood.

I liked his use of layering and textural techniques very much. Great colour sense too.

This serene capture of the Boathouse on Crummock Water (above) was probably my favourite.

I discovered more intricately-styled Cards, prints of 3-d birds and flowers by the organisor of the Girls Who Draw collection, Karoline Rerrie.

We worked out that we had spoken before but it must have been about 8 years previously at one of the Manchester Book Fairs, great to chat again and see her work going from strength to strength.

A new company to me was The Lost Fox showing their range of simplistic, yet elegantly sophisticated, limited edition screen prints.

Artist Kim Hubball working as Northern Sun, creates some wonderfully retro-modern designs. Starting out drawing commissions of mothers with their babies, Kim is moving into the world of textile designs and all over repeat designs. Great colours again.

Finally, from the brief selection of artists who caught my eye today, was the work of The Owlery and Sheffield designer and self taught pattern-maker, Ben Partridge. Ben is branching out from working with children with learning difficulties to creating new ranges of designs and inter-connecting prints on animal themes. He has a great attic space where he can work from and already sells through other shops and outlets. The best of luck Ben, it’s a great collection.

Thanks to everyone I chatted to and who let me show their work to you, the Fishink readers. I hope you’ll visit their websites and buy a little something too.