Discover one of London's hidden art gems! The Southbank Printmakers is a co-operative of forty artists selling quality limited edition original prints at affordable prices through our gallery in central London and online. Read our newsletter to discover what's in the gallery this month and which of our printmakers is featured as an Artist in Focus.
July at Southbank Printmakers
Published 1 day ago • 3 min read
July 2026
Southbank Printmakers
Original fine art print gallery
July is a busy month in the gallery with a party to celebrate our move to Fitzrovia on 9th July and our first workshop on Thursday 16th July. Our Artists in Focus, Nicola Styan and Liz Whiteman Smith, are both screenprinters who use this versatile medium to create quite different work. You can find out more about this technique in our Printmaking Questions section at the end of this newsletter.
Join us at the gallery!
If you'd like to come to our opening party on 9th July, please email info@southbankprintmakers.com - space is limited in our beautiful gem of a gallery so we need to track our numbers! There are only four places left on our first practical printmaking workshop on 16th July. It's suitable for complete beginners and is just £20, including all materials and wine! Send a message to 07796954953 to reserve a spot.
Themed events
Alice's Day is an annual festival in Oxford, England celebrating Lewis Carroll’s The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland. The event takes place on the first Saturday of July and marks the golden afternoon on 4th July 1862, when the author took Alice Liddell and her sisters on a boat trip and told the story that became a literary classic. We are celebrating Alice and the host of magical characters Carroll created with a display of prints by Liz Whiteman Smith in the gallery.
Our focus on London themed prints also continues this month as so many of our printmaker members choose to celebrate our fabulous city in their work. Below: Lucy Cooper's Waterloo Sunset and Jane Lydbury's Enlightenment (Greenwich Royal Observatory).
When you visit Southbank Printmakers you will see one of our members picked out as the Artist in Focus, with extra wall and browser space given to their work.
NICOLA STYAN: 6th-19th July
Nicola's work is a response to how we experience locations, particularly in London. It explores the stories held within buildings and how they change over time through redevelopment or new uses while highlighting the role of nature in the city.
Working directly on location, she creates sketches and paintings that capture the atmosphere of each place, then develops them into layered screenprints. She combines marks, form and colour to build up images that reflect not just how a place looks, but seeing it in a different way. The result is a series of prints that invite viewers to pause and notice details in their surroundings, offering a fresh perspective on city life.
Nicola gained a BA (Hons) in Fine Art-Printmaking at Winchester School of Art and MA Fine Art- Printmaking at University of Brighton. Further to teaching at the Working Men’s College in Camden for over ten years and leading the printmaking department, she has exhibited her screenprints throughout London and Europe.
Liz is a London-based screenprinter. She makes prints to make people smile, enjoying seeing the reaction people give when looking at her playful dinosaurs or colourful blue footed boobies.
As a Londoner, she is proud of the history and heritage in plain sight around every corner and the constant evolution and dynamism of the new that mixes, merges and develops this great city every single day.
Her series of London screen prints celebrates this juxtaposition of old and new that makes her home city so unique
What is Drypoint? Drypoint is a printmaking method where the image is created by scratching lines directly into a surface. This is then covered in ink and worked into the scratched lines. The surface is wiped clean, leaving ink just in the lines. The strong pressure of a printing press pushes the paper into the surface of the plate to pick up the ink. Drypoint is a quick and expressive way to create prints.
Try drypoint for yourself at our workshop on 16th July!
A screenprint set up with screen on a hinged baseboard.
What is aScreenprint? Screenprinting is a technique where ink is pushed through a finely woven mesh screen onto paper using a rubber blade called a squeegee. The screens can be turned into stencils in a variety of ways, from simple paper cut-outs, to filler applied directly onto the screen, or using a photo-exposure process. Artists can combine bold, flat areas of colour with intricate details, producing images that are both vibrant and highly precise. Multi-coloured images require a screen for each colour and careful registration to line up the layers.
Dates for your Diary
Opening Party Thursday 9th July, 6-8pm
Drink and Drypoint workshop Thursday 16th July, 6-8pm
Discover one of London's hidden art gems! The Southbank Printmakers is a co-operative of forty artists selling quality limited edition original prints at affordable prices through our gallery in central London and online. Read our newsletter to discover what's in the gallery this month and which of our printmakers is featured as an Artist in Focus.
