The Reading Room Gallery

The Reading Room Gallery in Whitby sits in a prominent position on the corner of Skinner Street, where Flowergate turns into St Hilda’s Terrace. Their street-facing windows show a regularly changing display of art from their stock of artists, often prompting visitors to stop and look at the work.

Inside, the small space is packed with prints, oil paintings, water colours and photographs from floor to ceiling. The owners Janine and Tom will gladly tell you about the works and the artists who made them.

One of the lesser known techniques they have become familiar with, is a modern intaglio print-making process called collography (or collagraphy). Saltburn artist Shirley Fletcher, one of the artists represented by the gallery, uses collography as an alternative to her usual medium of oil painting.

Materials of varying absorbency, such as glue and silicon carbide powder, are applied to a cardboard or wooden substrate to create a layered negative image. Ink is then rolled on and wiped from the surface to be left in the hollows, and the plate is pressed onto paper through a printing press. This process gives a comparable depth of tone along with the impression of the texture of the brushstrokes.

Shirley Fletcher, The Sea King, collograph.

Each colour in the final print requires its own handmade plate and the prints are shaped through a careful process of trial and error. Through small variations in the outcome, they are unique. As the plates have a limited capacity for reprinting, Fletcher only produces small editions of these saturated prints.