Greetings From Brighton Hand Pulled Screenprint
Greetings From Brighton
Twenty years of screen printing, and this is what happens when you throw the rulebook out. I've been trying to crack the code on mixing collage with bold type for years, getting the mess and the clarity to play nicely together. This series finally got me there.
It starts with the postcard. That bit of holiday nonsense your nan sends from Skegness. But this isn't tourist board Brighton. It's the Brighton that sticks in your ribs, the chippy queues. Seaside punk energy.
The process is a tough one. Four layers of stochastic screenprint, which means breaking the image into thousands of tiny dots, each one pulled by hand. It's how newspapers printed photos in the 1970s, before everything went digital. Messy, unpredictable, full of character. The kind of texture you can't fake on a computer.
I'm working with collage elements (vintage maps, old typography, found ephemera) then breaking it all down into those four colour passes. Cyan, magenta, yellow, black. Each layer has to register perfectly, but the hand-pulled process means tiny variations creep in. That's not a bug, it's the point. Each print is slightly different from the last.
The typography comes from that golden era of British design, late 60s, early 70s. Think holiday camp posters, British Rail signage, seaside arcade graphics. When letters had weight and weren't afraid to shout. I'm not copying it. I'm filtering it through twenty years of knowing how ink behaves on paper.
Details:
- 4-layer hand-pulled stochastic screenprint
- Limited edition of 100
- A3 420x297mm
- 350gsm Cairn recycled paper
- Gloss finish
- Signed and embossed
- Sold unframed
Packing: Wrapped in acid-free tissue, shipped in sturdy cardboard with certificate.
One of five in the Greetings From series: Cornwall, Brighton, Newcastle, Dublin and Columbia Road.
This isn't nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. It's about finding a visual language that feels honest to how this place actually sits in your memory. Rough around the edges, full of contradictions, impossible to pin down completely. For anyone who believes the best holidays happen in your own backyard, and that good printing is worth the extra effort.