International Womens Day 2025

To celebrate International Women’s Day 2025, Edinburgh Printmakers presents a selection of prints online and in-person to highlight and celebrate the impressive contribution to the studio and printmaking as a medium by female artists.

From early career artists Tayo Adekunle and Polly Rose Morris to the established visual language of Victoria Crowe and Moyna Flannigan, this selection recognises and charts women's diverse perspectives of the world we inhabit and the possibilities that come from experimentation in printmaking.

Edinburgh Printmakers has supported female artists since it was founded in 1967, in particular by establishing routes to sell. Historically, print workshops and printmaking as a medium were male dominated: now, in 2024, 74% of work sold by Edinburgh Printmakers was created by female or non-binary artists. With partnerships such as the Own Art programme, which helps customers purchase work by living artists, we continue to enable printmaking as a viable career option for all.

All of the works shown on this page are available to view in-person at Edinbrugh Printmakers, in our shop, café space, and other display spaces.

Female artists have been instrumental in Edinburgh Printmakers' evolution since its establishment in 1967. 

Edinburgh Printmakers' permanent art collection holds a wide range of prints created in our studio by members and invited artists since we opened our doors in 1967. The first of these by female artists came from Sam Ainsley and Gwen Hardie, both prominent visual artists who have explored feminism and representations of the female form. Working in collaboration with printmakers Tim Cockburn and Elspeth Lamb respectively, these represent the blossoming of our EP Editions programme in the 1980s. Both works will be shown in our exhibition Story: Impressions from Edinburgh Printmakers Collection from April 4 2025.

In 2015, Kate Downie was commissioned to create a print based on Edinburgh Printmakers new building, Castle Mills, which was almost derelict before renovation work began. Downie’s approach was to draw on site, producing several sketches and a large scale drawing as the source material.

In 2017, to celebrate 50 years of printmaking excellence, Edinburgh Printmakers invited 50 artists (among them studio members, residency artists, and technicians) to each produce an anniversary print in an astonishing commemorative folio of contemporary Scottish printmaking, including work by Christine Wylie, Nan Mulder, and Frances Richardson.

Since Sam Ainsley and Gwen Hardie produced the first EP Editions by female artists, printmakers have continued to use Edinburgh Printmakers' facilities and expertise to develop prints that explore our culture and challenge existing narratives.

Tayo Adekunle, who had an exhibition with Edinburgh Printmakers in the summer of 2024, uses her work to unpack the power stories hold in the preservation of history, tradition and culture, with a specific focus on African countries and the Yoruba spiritual tradition. 

Multi-media artist Rachel Maclean was commissoned by Edinburgh Printmakers for her first solo show in 2013. Ths exhibition examined Scotland's romantic histories through the lens of contemporary political debate, creating a complex and surreal vision of modern Scotland.

The women in Moyna Flannigan's Femme Fatale series are portraits created from her imagination. Rather than depicting individuals, they represent toxic stereotypes of women - each portrait is named after a poisonous plant. Her work is often dark and ironic, and draws on the past to represent fictional women in a modern context.

Hannah Lim's first solo show at Edinburgh Printmakers attempted to reclaim and re-imagine 'Chinoiserie', where elements of Chinese design and culture were recreated and imitated in relation to European aesthetics and tastes.

Christian Noelle Charles developed a unique presentation of screenprints at Edinburgh Printmakers in 2023, part of an exploration project discussing topics of racial identity, inequality, care, and love through the Black Feminine Lens.

Printmaking has long been an artistic technique that creatives have used to experiment, whether that be innovating with materials or processes. 

Artists such as Katy Dove, Joy Arden, Rhona Taylor, and Claire MacDonald use their work to push the boundaries of printmaking innovation and explore the often unpredictable nature of the medium. Reflecting on the process of collaborating on Katy's prints, Head of Editions Alastair Clark reflects:

"We didn't really pre-plan much... We worked in a fast and spontaneous way. I would be on the screenprinting table, and she would be on the bench, four feet away from me, exploring and playing by drawing different things. We would just talk to each other over our shoulders, and I liked that she knew what she wanted. It was a very easy and spontaneous way of working."

Printmaking complements other creative practices and provides ample opportunity to explore different ideas, as seen through the work of Dilys Rose (combining poetry and printmaking), Leena Nammari (combining printmaking and sculpture), and Jessica Harrison (translating her sculptural practice into print). 

The surrounding landscape capivates artists Victoria Crowe, Susie Wright, Carol Rhodes, and Lyndsay Gauld, who all observe and respond to the landscape, organic material and wider environment that exists around us. Artists who focus on life within it, such as Helen Kennedy, Polly Rose Morris, Kittie Jones, and Arabella Crum Ewing "capture the wildness that is all around us and within us, exploring moments in nature that are entwined with the everyday rhythm of life" (Polly Rose Morris).

Our environment spreads beyond this. Ellen Munro, Jenny Martin, Sonia Mehra Chawla and Namhara Byron Low all reflect on memory and experience, exploring the emotional and physical remnants of things have have come before.