Dumfries House, Royal Drawing School 2025

My most recent time away from the studio was a residency with the Royal Drawing School at Dumfries House, where I was based for two weeks in May. There were four artists who worked independently, and we had our own studios. We were very fortunate that the weather was really hot and sunny, so every day I would go out to explore the landscape and take long walks. As my first residency during pregnancy, it was a slightly different experience, but it went really well.

I started by visiting the grounds of Dumfries House Estate, which is open to the public with free entry and parking. They have public gardens, and you can take tours of the house. The house is operated by The King's Foundation, King Charles's registered charity. King Charles facilitated the purchase of the estate in 2007 through his charitable foundation to save it from sale, using £20 million of his own charitable foundation's money and personally brokering a £45 million deal. He acquired the house and estate to help support the local community through education programmes and also invites projects to happen there.

Thanks to the Royal Drawing School, which I applied to for the residency, they gave us a studio for two weeks and access to printing facilities. The Royal Drawing School offers these residencies at Dumfries House for up to four artists at any one time, running year-round except at Christmas.

I applied for the printing residency, and initially it was meant to be just printing as much as possible. However, being pregnant meant I wasn't allowed to do certain things, so they were very accommodating. This gave me a chance to be flexible with printing and use new techniques. I did a lot of monoprinting, even taking the plates outside to work with colored inks, and I made quite a large series of prints on paper.

I also worked directly from the landscape on location. I took my rucksack with me and would stop to sketch initially, then find locations that I found most inspiring for their environments. I would settle down to do bigger works, starting with smaller pictures and then, by the end of the two weeks, creating quite large works on paper, which I completed in the studios.