What We Do

Poole Painting Studio offers:

A beautiful, light, airy, atmospheric space dedicated to making art;
Exchange of ideas with other artists;
An excellent series of short courses through the summer, weekly classes and other less structured opportunities for you to join in and make art.
Easels, drawing boards, sinks and other equipment;
An inspiring collection of books, artworks and things to draw.

Together, Poole Painting Studio and Poole Printmakers share the building at 5, Bowling Green Alley, now named Liddell Art Studios in memory of John Liddell 1924 – 2005, founder of Poole Printmakers.

The two enterprises have two separate websites:

Poole Painting Studio: www.poole-painting.org.uk

Poole Printmakers: www.poole-printmakers.org.uk

Poole Printmakers offers:

Membership of an artists’ group run by its own committee.
Presses and other equipment for relief printing, etching, silkscreen, monoprint and other processes;
A space dedicated to getting on with art, and open-access use for members;
Other artists and their work to inspire and share ideas, exhibitions and social events;
A series of courses in print techniques.

How we Started

An 18th Century cart shed with medieval work in the foundations, the building at 5, Bowling Green Alley has been through many uses and transformations. In the late 1980s artist Jenny Surridge bought the building and had it sensitively converted for use as a studio and workshop. From 1991 she let the ground floor workshop to Poole Printmakers, the co-operative group of artist-printmakers originally founded by John Liddell. She named the upper floor Arranmore Studio and used it for her own work.

Poole Printmakers continued with tenancy of the ground floor workshop when the building was sold in 2006 to Ruth Oaks who used this opportunity to start her own enterprise, Poole Painting Studio, on the upper floor.

What the area has to offer

The unique environment of the studio has a wealth of inspiration for the artist. The building has a delightful walled garden with sculpture and climbing plants where you can sit and relax or draw.

From the windows of the studio you can see some of the picturesque buildings of old Poole including the Guildhall and Market Street which has some of the finest historic buildings in the town.

A few minutes walk from the studio there’s lots to enjoy at Poole Quay for its bustle of boats and holiday-makers, and lovely old buildings. Around the fishermen’s dock you can find good opportunities for sketching, or you can get a boat trip to Brownsea Island or around Poole Harbour.

Sir Anthony Caro’s sculpture “Sea Music” is on Poole Quay, while Poole Museum close by houses an excellent collection of British art including works by Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Jacob Epstein and Ivon Hitchens.

Within easy reach the Isle of Purbeck, the Jurassic Coast and the wider Dorset landscape have inspired many past and contemporary artists.

Painterly Prints: Monoprint, Collagraph and Carborundum

For today’s artists there is less of a division than there used to be between painting and printmaking. Printmakers are making “painterly prints”. Painters are using a wide variety of media including printmaking in their work. Poole Painting Studio and Poole Printmakers Workshop together in the same building offer an excellent opportunity for exchange of and combinations of ideas and techniques in painting and printmaking media.

A monoprint is a print made using any printmaking methods which result in a unique image rather than an identical series or edition. There is no one way of making a monoprint. Monoprints can be made using a wide variety of materials and equipment, with or without a press.

Monoprints can achieve a freedom of mark-making which though “painterly” can only be achieved using printmaking techniques. You could describe them as lying somewhere between painting and printmaking. Monoprints do not offer the commercial possibility of making and selling an edition, but they do offer total freedom, and some unpredictability, in using print techniques for their mark-making and image-making potential.

Collagraph and carborundum are ways of building up texture on a printing plate to hold ink and to allow a huge range of mark-making possibilities in the print. These processes do allow for the printing of a small edition although many artists prefer to continue to experiment by inking and wiping the plate in different ways to create unique prints.