For the past forty years, we’ve been absorbed in the practice of creating something out of nothing. Making prints from the fragments of our travels and imaginations, fine frames out of unhewn wood & handmade paper from thousands of off-cuts. It has been an all encompassing and poetic process and our latest chapter is the conversion of a neighbourhood bakery into an atelier-gallery: our first every urban location. More about that later…

As stardust children of the sixties, our utopian founding principles have stood the test of time : interdependence, creativity, experimentation and transmission.   A  creative life well-lived, preferably without the accompaniment of grinding poverty. Neither of us ever wanted a nine-to-five job and freedom seemed like a goal worth working for.  Goals are nice, but they don’t mean anything if you don’t show up and start doing it. So straight after graduating we begun teaching, learning and exchanging and we haven’t stopped since: initially art history, then onto printmaking, papermaking, bespoke framing, later on furniture & craft design and recently curating contemporary art exhibitions.

Our business plan was the ‘use-what-you-have-around’ model and keep on at it until it works (i.e. sells). We had few resources apart from a magnificent but windswept miner’s cottage ‘Mountain Gate’, painstakingly transformed by Pete into a pseudo Greek villa, all rough white walls and sky and a view over the mountains to make your heart literally skip a beat (when the mist occasionally lifted). Plus we had loads of fresh air in the form of wind and most importantly young love and time. Thankfully we both share a creative mindset and the ability to adapt, so we got started self-building a wood & glass studio with room for the obligatory wood burning stove and possibly a bit of kit one day once we had the funds. 

A chance meeting with a master papermaker, Maureen Richardson, an expert on  all things paper and print-related set us on a new path. We had plenty of paper off-cuts from our framing business to recycle and a constant supply of wind for air drying so we learnt how to make paper. The results were astonishing, and as our handmade papers beautifully complemented our prints it was time to scale up.

Our first major equipment investment was a handmade Bewick & Wilson etching press, crafted by two highly skilled engineers in their garage in the north of England.  A monstrously heavy beast, it was delivered to our newly-built, empty studio in a van with strengthened suspension and a pulley system to manoeuvre it. Steadfast under fire, it remained there for ten years until we moved it, with great effort and no pulley, to Southwest France. 

Sometimes you just have to jump and so with scant preparation after falling for an idyllic house with a massive fig tree in the front garden in the heart of a ridiculously picturesque village, we moved to France in 2000. The biggest shock was the significant rise in population: from 20 in Brynafan in Wales to a staggering 130 in St Marcel du Périgord. 

It took some time to get used to the hurly burly of village life, which we did whilst restoring an old house for a growing family and turning old barns into workshop and gallery spaces: Atelier Ermitage. A precious time indeed with an orientation towards fine woodworking and furniture design for private clients and a superheroine guise as Paperwoman running workshops about paper transformation and metamorphosis at public events.

Time moved on apace, children grew up and the big city called. So eighteen years later we moved up the road to Périgueux and 30,000 potential customers ! In the capital of Dordogne, we fell upon and bought a disused bakery which we transformed into a light-filled atelier-studio, our first urban location. We call it artplus as a way of bringing together the various strands of our working creative lives, but also because it’s an open door to what might follow.

That same press, a constant in our lives, now stands victoriously in our green-walled printmaking studio at artplus. Many hands have used it and we hope many more as we enlarge our programme of workshops and open studio access to share our lifelong passion for creation, experimentation and life itself.