I'm Rachel, a printmaker and visual artist based in Limerick, Ireland, working with cyanotype to reveal the hidden world beneath familiar coastlines.
Growing up in Sligo on the west coast of Ireland, I spent years looking out at the Atlantic, a landscape many people know intimately from the shore but rarely explore beneath the surface. My work brings those two worlds together, placing the underwater alongside the landscape above to ask what lies just out of sight of the places we think we know.
I recently graduated from Limerick School of Art and Design, where I studied Print Contemporary Practice. My practice combines cyanotype with photography and printmaking, drawing on my own underwater photography to create imagery that is immersive and meditative. The cyanotype process feels essential to this work, its deep, saturated blues and its sensitivity to light carry the quality of water itself.
What is a Cyanotype?
A cyanotype is a photographic printing process that uses chemistry and light (UV) to create beautiful, deep Prussian blue images on fabric or paper. No ink, no printer, just light and a chemical reaction.
Every print is genuinely one-of-a-kind. Natural objects shift slightly, chemistry responds organically, and no two prints are ever exactly the same. You're buying a handmade photographic artwork with real history and craft behind it.
A Little History
Cyanotype printing was invented way back in 1842 by a British scientist named Sir John Herschel. It's one of the oldest photographic processes in the world.
What is a collagraph?
A collagraph is a printmaking technique where you build up a textured surface on a board (like a collage), ink it up, and press it onto paper or fabric to create a richly textured, tactile print.
The word comes from the Greek "kolla" meaning glue, and "graphos" meaning drawing.
In my own collagraphs I use polyfill to create a textured wave surface, after sanding I use french polish to seal it. Various coloured inked are then spread, rolled and painted on to create my desired feel.
No two prints from the same plate are ever identical, the pressure, the inking, the paper all vary slightly each time. That's what makes them so special.
A peom written by Sean Feeney of the Dawn Petrol, Streedagh Beach, Sligo
Rachel's view.