Printmaking from the Archive of Suzanne Balkanyi

Michelle Keegan was introduced to Leicester Print Workshop’s archive of Suzanne Balkanyi’s etching plates, it resonated strongly with the work she was developing in response to loss and memorialisation. Balkanyi’s work is highly illustrative, the selection of plates are sophisticated portraits of animals and representational landscapes.

Michelle was curious about collaborating with the physical remnants of an artist’s practice to produce contemporary prints in honour of both practices as a way to bring additional meaning to the work. In many ways the etching plates hold printmaking secrets that are rarely seen.

You will have the opportunity to explore and work with Balkanyi’s original etching plates and develop your own prints revisiting what already exists as an object without damaging the original plates.

Course Structure

• Sharing prints from Michelle Keegan’s exhibition.
• Introduction, examples and demonstration
• Prepare your own plates with tapes, plastic and stencils.
• Print and experiment with the archive plates of Suzanne Balkanyi.
• Make a small series of prints
• Cleaning up and evaluation

If you have any questions, access requirements or learning needs that the tutor needs to be aware of please get in touch to let us know

About the Tutor

Michelle Keegan is a Printmaker and educator. She is the Senior Lecturer in Printmaking at the University of Northampton and tutor for Printmaking at Open College of Arts. Michelle is also a guest tutor at numerous Print Workshops. She studied Fine Art at the Kent Institute of Art and Design, graduating with first class honours. She specialised in Printmaking immediately, having been intrigued by the possibilities of Printmaking. Michelle continued her post graduate education at the Slade School of Fine Art. She has made Prints and exhibited widely for the past 25 years.

Her work explores boundaries between people and places, liminality. It explores the dynamics and ambiguities of relationships, therefore exposing private ways of seeing and that of wider public discourses. Printmaking is essential to the work; it is symbiotic with the idea. The etching process and materiality of Printmaking becomes a spontaneous transcription of feelings and memories, both familiar and elusive. The results are intricate and complex multi-layered prints that resist literal interpretation and lack referential scale, honouring instead a physically charged and deeply personal mapping of the environment.

www.keeganarts.co.uk