Alex Poyner

The techniques that I use were shaped at Falmouth Art College and Winchester School of Art, where I trained as a print designer for the fashion industry specialising in screen print. For the last 9 years I have worked for Fairbairn and Wolf Studio as their Head Designer, creating and innovate through print design and who I still consult for.

I create my original seascape pieces through the family of screen print methods. After sketching the scene I hand paint the foreground, buildings, greenery, sea, buoys and boats in many layers through the mesh of the screen. This allows me to be expressive while keeping a clean, crisp feel to the colour. I then screen print the sky in a block colour to further enhance the motion in the rest of the painting. Finally, I screen print my line drawing over the top in white or black to bring the narrative of the painting together.

I create up to 5 original edition of each scene which all vary in application of colour, state of tide, seasons and weather. Giving each original edition a completely different feel, while having the same narrative as the only part which is replicated is screen printing my hand drawn line drawing as the final layer.

While I love creating works through screen print methods there is sometimes nothing better than painting directly onto canvas. I create a smaller collection of paintings and sometimes screen print the background before I paint onto it. I build up these paintings through layers of acrylic paint and inks and draw back into them with graphite and charcoal.