Inside the Studio: Hand-Printed in Hertfordshire

The Story...

Stuart Foster called me in January. Twenty years of Witney Music Festival, and he wanted a print to mark it.

The festival began as a tribute to his sister Jo, who passed away before any of this existed. Stuart built something extraordinary in her name, and it's been running ever since. That's the foundation. Jo is the seed this whole thing grew from.

The image is a flower pushing up from underground. Roots in dark earth, stem rising, leaves spreading, the number 20 sitting at the heart of the flower head. Two decades of music and community, all of it rooted in one person who never got to see it.

I went to 1960s festival and protest poster design for the visual language because that era understood weight. Bold shapes. Flat colour. Collaged crowd scenes and guitar silhouettes pressed into the background, half-buried. Analogue grit. Nothing smoothed out.

Four colours, hand-pulled on 280gsm recycled art paper, B2, 50cm x 70cm. The ink sits on the surface. You can see where the squeegee passed. These aren't digital prints.

Every online order is hand-signed and hand-stamped before it ships. Unsigned screenprints will be at the festival in June for £40. This edition is £50, postage and packaging included, in a crush-proof tube with acid-free tissue paper.

The festival is her legacy. This print says so, in ink, on every copy.