About Fiona Gray

The need to design & make things is huge part of my life & has been from a very early age. Over the years I have worked with a range of materials - wood, metal, stone, glass, plaster, concrete, polymer, often combining two of more together in a single piece. I’m based in the North East, & have been a practising Artist / Designer for over twenty years, graduating from Crewe and Alsager College in 1990. My work is divided between designing large-scale public artworks, teaching and developing my own work - plaster cast plaques & digital botanical prints. The plaques developed from a plaster-casting workshop I ran with a group of children several years ago. I have since refined my technique & developed the range of plaques that you can see on my website. The process involves pressing plants & flowers in to clay, removing them, putting a frame round & pouring plaster in. When I started out I was amazed at the detail that the process picked up & I never fail to be excited when peeling off the clay to reveal my latest casting. The botanical prints are relatively new & follow on from the plaster work. They both combine my love of the countryside and nature, I find the sculptural qualities of a simple flower, seedpod or Fir cone visually exciting. The life of flowers and plants can be very short lived, the artworks I make are like capturing a moment in time, preserving them to be enjoyed long after they have faded away. I use a combination of photography, painting & digital manipulation to create the images.