Ffocws #9

Samantha Boulanger is an artist and printmaker with a BA (Hons) and MA in Fine Art, working from Stiwdio Ci Du, Mynydd Bach in rural Ceredigion, West Wales. She works with a range of media, including traditional printmaking, cyanotype, botanical eco-printing, painting and mixed media, with inspiration drawn from the natural world and the connections we form within it.

A recurring subject throughout Samantha’s work has been whippets, inspired by her beloved Guto, who for 14 years was both companion and muse. His distinctive silhouette, quirky character, quiet elegance and fluid movement became a familiar visual language within her work, but it was the bond they shared that gave these images their character and depth.

Following Guto’s passing in August 2025, that relationship with the whippet form as a subject has naturally evolved. His presence remains woven through Samantha’s work, exploring how memory and connection can continue forward and take on new forms.
Continuing to work with his familiar, graceful form is both an exploration of these themes and a way of keeping that connection alive and honouring Guto’s lasting legacy within her life and creative practice.

Samantha’s practice continues to evolve through her relationship with the natural world and the environment in which she lives and works. Alongside botanical forms, birds and other wildlife, she is currently revisiting a childhood love and obsession with horses, bringing the horse and whippet together in recent pieces. These recurring and emerging subjects draw together memory and experience with an increasing awareness of the interconnectedness of the natural world.

Caroline Race is a painter and printmaker based in Colwyn Bay and Liverpool. She trained in Fine Art at Bangor University and went on to finish her degree through The Wirral Met and John Moores. Caroline was trained by Professor Mike Knowles and David Loten RCA. She specialises in paper lithograph, oil painting and drawing. Her work has been published in a-n Magazine Artist’s Newsletter and she was also shortlisted for the Wales Portrait award. Caroline also makes artists books which have been exhibited in America as well as touring this country.

Living in a small village near Corwen, Carys is inspired by the rural sceneries, farmland, building structures, places of wilderness, seeped in nature, in ever shifting light and colours throughout the seasons.

Carys experiments with various medias, often a collage is the foundation they build on, then acrylics, inks, pastels etc, coating the surface with encaustic wax, scratching into the surface before adding oil paint to settle in the grooves and discovering exciting effects and underlayers.

There is comfort in the colours and textures to be garnered from the land and in Carys’ creative process. Ever striving to capture the essence of Home, “home” that can be physical or spiritual, as well as sense of coming home to the self that can be felt.

Mary was a primary school teacher for 34 years. Since her retirement she has developed her Alternative Photography practice, driven by an innate curiosity and experimentation with the Victorian photographic processes Cyanotype and Lumen prints.

Mary works from her home studio in a small village on the bank of the river Conwy overlooking the Carneddau mountains. Through experimentation Mary has created a technique using expired darkroom papers, cyanotype solution and various household ingredients to produce original one-off pieces of work. She often uses natural plant materials, Victorian illustrations and her own photographs to create her prints.