Kate Hudson Printmaker
Kate is an Australian artist specializing in limited edition colour linocuts. She uses native birds and flowers in her highly patterned and decorative prints.
She trained as a textile designer at the Central School of Art & Design in London and worked freelance for 6 years before migrating to Australia in 1990 with her young family.
Kate draws influence from Japanese woodblocks, Art Nouveau, the Arts & Crafts Movement and printmakers such as Margaret Preston.
She does all her drawing, designing and lino block carving in her Eltham studio and prints them on an Albion Press from the 1880’s.
Kate exhibits regularly and her prints are part of many private and public collections including The Austin Hospital, Aichi Prefectural Government Japan, Australian Print Workshop, Australian unity, City of Darebin, City of Whitehorse, Crown Casino, Geelong Gallery, Mornington Peninsular Regional Gallery, National Gallery of Australia, Nillumbik Shire Council and the Print Council of Australia.
LINOCUTS & HOW I MAKE THEM
Linocuts are relief prints, which means the raised area of the block takes the ink and makes the image. The block is carved then inked up, a piece of paper is put on top, pressure is applied either by hand or a press and the image is transferred onto the paper.
The colour prints I make are reduction prints, 2 blocks are used for all the colours and more of the block is carved away after each colour has been printed.
My prints all start with a drawing in pencil. Then I make more detailed sketches and colour studies. Next comes the design stage. I photocopy my drawings and cut and paste them the old-fashioned way with scissors and sticky tape. Once I’m happy with the layout I photocopy it again and colour it in to get an idea of the finished print.
I make a careful tracing of my design and use carbon paper to transfer the design onto the lino block. I am now ready to start carving. I do this looking through a magnifying glass, which means I can get smoother curves and finer details.
I use transparent ink called extender with small amounts of coloured ink mixed in. This means that the colours in my prints are built up from each other as each layer is added.
These are oil-based inks and each colour has to be completely dry before the next colour is printed. I print the colours from light to dark, so the first week I would print 40 sheets of paper with the background colour, go home carve some more away, go back the next week and print the 2nd colour and so on until the prints are complete. Most of my prints have 10 or more colours in and take more than 2 months to complete.