17th July – 15th August 2026
Preview: Friday 17th July 17:30 onwards, all welcome!
Flora Forshall is a Falmouth based printmaker working primarily with lino and silk screen printing. Having spent her early life inspired by the wildlife and the open wooded landscapes of the Lot, France, she moved to Falmouth in 2015 to study Textile Design at Falmouth University. During her degree, she developed an interest in using bold forms, pattern and colour to create designs portraying natural and human environments, this is where she her love for screen printing began. A way of creating bold engaging images.
After graduating in 2019, Flora moved away from fabric, applying her unique style to artworks portraying a range of subjects, from native Cornish wildlife to suburban landscapes. Her work aims to capture the relationship between a subject and their environment, be it a human or wild. She enjoys working at the extremes of scale and complexity, and has a unique ability to produce compositions. In 2023, she undertook a one-month residency in Oaxaca, Mexico, with a focus on using natural dyes for screen printing. Inspired by the vibrant local textiles and lush landscapes and wildlife, she spent the following year developing works that applied vibrant colours to express the exotic vegetation and culture of the area. Her inspiration has since oscillated between exotic and native subjects, with her most recent focus being marine life and environments. Flora’s creative process begins with observation and experimentation, often using sketching and collage to explore composition, colour, and pattern. She develops her ideas through layering drawings, cut-outs, refining the interaction between forms before committing them to print. Hand printed in very limited editions in John Howard’s studio in Penryn, Cornwall, or Sonsoles Studio in Peckham, London, which offer the facilities necessary for her larger work.
The Young Penwith Artist programme was created in 2022 to run annually to support young artists based in Cornwall, by providing the artists with a funded exhibition in our studio gallery during our Associates Summer Exhibition. It’s a fantastic opportunity for artists aged 35 and under to submit work and engage with the gallery as a professional artist to create their own show. The exhibition is completely funded by the Penwith Society of Arts, with the goal of the programme to create stronger connections with younger artists based in Cornwall.
