2026 is my fourth Burnham Art Trail and I’m delighted to be returning to the Garden Studio at 4 Fernlea Road, which is Venue 3. You can check out the map, venues, other artists and events on the Art Trail website.

I’ve had fun making monoprints with a gel plate and acrylic paints for this year’s Trail.

Each monoprint is a unique and unrepeatable print, made up of thin layers of acrylic paint which are rolled out onto the gel plate (it’s like a slab of silcone) and lifted with paper.

I added texture to the wet paint layers by pressing in materials such as corrugated card board (to make stripes), toilet rolls (to make circles), bubble wrap (to make little circles), fabric (to make a woven pattern), plastic containers (to get more complex repeating patterns) as well as leaves and flowers.

You can achieve interesting colour variations by changing the colours of each paint layer. I sometimes used metallic paints for extra interest. Stencils are a great way to create shapes – I cut and applied circles, rectangles and numbers.

The results are unpredictable which can sometimes be exciting and sometimes frustrating!

I’ve also experimented with image transfer: using photocopies of my drawings to lift some of the wet paint leaving the design on the plate. It’s tricky and only worked for me about 30% of the time.

When you do achieve a successful transfer of your image to the gel plate you can ‘reverse paint’ it. That means applying different colours to different sections of the plate with a brush or roller and allowing each colour plenty of time to dry. Once all the colours are on the plate you roll out a thin layer of paint over the whole lot and lay the paper down while it’s still wet. Pop some books on the top to press it down for several hours before carefully peeling back the paper to see the result.

I used a Gelli Arts gel plate, Amsterdam acrylic paint and Seawhite black paper. I liked the way the black paper made the colours pop!