Annie Fforde is an artist, printmaker and freelance tutor with strong study, work and exhibition links with the Bradford district. She is a Leeds graduate in fine art and has also studied printmaking at Bradford School of Art.
Annie lived in France for seventeen years until 2018, where she led at the Centre de la Gravure: a contemporary printmaking centre in Céret in Catalonia. Here she raised the profile of the Centre by organising exhibitions in France and elsewhere, and led workshops for the Ex-Libris group, where members were encouraged to take an experimental approach to work and share their knowledge of printmaking. Members of the group were also encouraged to create work of a quality suitable for showing in International and National exhibitions, and to exchange ideas, and to work with other printmaking groups. The Centre also organised printmaking workshops both at the Centre and a nearby college; these included monotype, lino, woodcut, dry point, carborundum, collagraph, and viscosity printing.
On returning to the UK, Annie joined Inkers: a group of independent contemporary printmakers who collaborate to share practice, to exhibit together and to design and take part in creative projects. Annie has also been active in leading workshops at the South Square Arts Centre in Thornton, and elsewhere in the region, including at Leeds, and at the Piece Hall, and Everybody Arts (formerly Artworks), Halifax, where Annie now lives. She is also a member of Saltaire Inspired,
She encourages an experimental approach both in her workshops and in her own work, which include woodcuts combined with monotype, drypoints with monotype or etchings. Her work has been been exhibited in solo and collaborative shows both in France and in Britain, and featured in artists’ books.
Crossing the Water. Etching, inspired by a Sylvia Plath poem.
In Yorkshire, shows have included those at the Dyehouse Gallery, Bradford College; the Trapezium Gallery, Bradford; and at South Square, Thornton. Annie has recently been selected to join the Bradford 2025 Visual Art Steering Group, where she hopes to raise the level and understanding of printmaking as a fine art practice.
She has said of her own work:
I have an abstract approach to art, often combining two or more printmaking processes. I create the image using line, texture and layering colour. It’s my emotional response to abstract ideas or concepts, music, poetry, landscape and objects in collections. My use of colour is sometimes heightened depending on the mood of the imagined landscape and subject matter.
Passage 2 . Monotype.
Example of Annie Fforde’s work from ‘Saltaire Inspired’
Artist’s Website: Annie Fforde