I have wanted to do a workshop with Dianne Fogwell since I saw her exhibition, Prescience, at the Geelong Gallery in 2022. I could not believe my luck when I discovered that Susan Baran had invited Dianne to teach a workshop in Skopelos a week after David Frazer’s workshop, which I was already booked to attend. I enrolled straight away. That led to a wonderful month on Skopelos.

The workshop was called Colour in Relief. Dianne showed us how she works through colour as she approaches and understands it. There are many ways to achieve colour in printmaking, and in the masterclass section of the workshop, Dianne took us through a journey of methods. We looked at the matrix, single and multiple blocks, reduction, stencil, applied colour and various techniques of application. Dianne also worked through ways of printing from the press to the table, covering ideas from both Western and Eastern approaches to colour and various methods of registration.

Dianne showed us the inks she uses in colour printing, along with other materials, and also how paper changes the relationship to the process and the image. I learnt a great deal over the 10-day workshop. Dianne was very knowledgeable, very open and creative. I created some test prints at the end of the workshop, but I really need to experiment a lot more to truly understand Dianne’s process. It has opened up a lot of possibilities for me.