Hi Deb, could you start by telling us some of your most significant memories of early making?

I was always making things. One of my earliest memories is of drawing in the sand underneath a tree rope swing and other kids gathering around and watching. I was always drawing comic strips and making my own little comics for my friends. At school, I joined a modelling club & made a bridge for my train set – I must have spent months making it! Later on, I was in a photography club where we’d go on walks and explore old buildings, developing the photos in the darkroom at lunchtime. The teacher was great. 

Where did you first encounter printmaking? 

I studied Fashion Design at the highly competitive Epsom School of Art & Design, I was terrible at pattern making and sewing but fortunately I discovered a love of screen printing there. I escaped the fashion world to live in Devon and when not working or exploring the coastline (or drinking scrumpy) I’d paint bonkers pictures in my unheated attic room. I then spent three months in America and having ‘found myself’ in the US, I moved to London to work in design studios and study Printed Surface Decoration & Illustration at University of East London, which was a completely different environment to Epsom – and I loved it. I spent many hours in the basement print room experimenting or visiting Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood, the V&A or Spitalfields – sketchbook-in-hand. I moved back to the North East to teach Art and English and do a part time MA in Illustration at Northumbria University and learn etching at Northern Print, where I’m still a member.

What do your days in the studio look like? 

I spend a lot of time staring into space and procrastinating but this is often when my best ideas pop into my head. Then I’ll be totally immersed, listening to music and often working into the early hours without realising it. I pin my inspiration and references around me and draw willy-nilly filling the page. I’m very particular about the type of pencils and paper I like, and use water soluble pastels for larger areas. I’ll cut and paste, physically with scissors and tape, and play around with scenes and situations, without worrying where the edge of the page is. I love the idea of characters coming alive off the page and giving the viewer a certain look, like ‘I have to put up with this!’ I really love drawing directly on the surface of lithograph stone with greasy crayons. Litho is fantastic for capturing the spontaneity and immediacy of a drawing.

How has your relationship with your creative process evolved over time?

I think I’ve come full circle to incorporate drawing, printmaking, story-telling, music, costume, and model making. All of my experiences have come to nurture one another and I’ve been working on a lot of exciting things recently. To mark the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s Folio’s first publication, I reimagined classics for an exhibition with David Hockney and Ellie Clewlow by creating prints and also puppets! I also created the artwork for Hector Gannett’s music video, which premiered at the Glasshouse International Centre for Music and was shortlisted for Sunderland Short Film Festival.

What do you hope your viewers will notice or experience when engaging with your work? 

My work is narrative driven. There’s always a backstory. I have a very clear idea of what that is, but I like to see people discover their own interpretation. It’s really lovely to see people smile and I quite often like to hide a character peeking from behind a tree or a small creature in the corner. Now I think about it, my work does have a lot of recurring themes, particularly the theatre and fairgrounds, for some reason (perhaps because I have been the front of a pantomime horse and gotten stuck at the top of a ferris wheel!). I take inspiration from magic realism such as the works of novelist Angela Carter and I’m fascinated by automata like wind-up music boxes and animatronic puppets. I’m also inspired by stop motion animation, particularly the work of Ray Harryhausen, music, past lives, film noir and Powell & Pressburger – titans of early cinematic world-building.

Shop a selection of Deborah Snell’s intricate lithographs here or visit the entire collection in gallery now.