Claire Stevens

Born in 1958 in Sudbury, Suffolk, I moved to Scotland  in 1980 and made my career in the charity sector, until my retirement last year. I have no formal art education, but I have drawn and made art throughout my life. A stone lithography summer school with Alastair Clark in 2019 quickly led to an obsession with printmaking, having never considered or done any printmaking previously at all. Post-Covid my continued stone lithography practice saw me accepted for EP membership. I then studied printmaking one day a week at Leith School of Art for two academic years, which introduced me to screen-printing as well as to intaglio and relief printing, and since 2024 I have also undertaken some screen printing at EP. In September 2025 I began the one year drawing course at LSA, specifically in order to further inform and enrich my creative practice at EP.  

Throughout this time I have repeatedly used printmaking as a process through which to consider the nature of memory and personal identity. When memory is fragmentary, fading or false, or when those we love are far away or beyond reach, what does this mean for how we understand ourselves, experience life and connect to other people? Living with a partner with an aggressive and debilitative dementia has made this question deeply personal to me. The possibilities and the processes involved in all of the forms of printmaking I have undertaken have opened up a creative outlet for such feelings and ideas, have helped me look over the edge and keep going, to step across the cracks in a quest for emotional and artistic salvation.