Zoe Needle

I am a multi-disciplinary printmaker, artist and educator living in Shrewsbury and practicing from my small studio next to my garden.
I make work intuitively and through deep contemplation when walking in rural and urban environments. I gather and collect textures, marks, patterns and shapes. Drawing from the mundane and everyday, I aim to capture a moment in time, the stillness and the un-noticed surfaces and marks that are often over looked… The imperfections in small things are often the spark for something new. Celebrating being in the moment I create work that reflects being in nature and moments of mindfulness.

The print techniques I use are mainly analogue. I embrace the unpredictability of printmaking. I combine woodcut (printing on a press and Mokuhanga and Mokulito), mono print, collagraph and screen print. The way I create my final prints could be frowned upon by some traditional printmakers, as the prints are sometimes part of my process and not always the end result. I use a technique called decollage the opposite of collage – where prints are cut up and intercut back together to form new outcomes – mixing and collating colours and textures into one again. I often mount these pieces on birch plywood and most recently developed a new collection called ‘Art for Small Spaces’. – Sip of Calm, Roots and Shoots and The Wanderer Collections.

Most recently in the past year I have been making my practice more connected to the earth by collecting pigment found in the ground on walks and travels. It is a new learning process grinding and binding these in to printmaking inks these have been used in recent collections of woodcuts and mono prints.