Pauline Greuell: A Late Flowering Perennial
‘Pauline Greuell is a stencil artist who works mainly with botanical themes. Fluffy dandelion seed heads, flowing tulips, soft blue cornflower, a graphic iris design that resembles an art deco print. ‘ love nature and also abstract designs’.
Pauline will be running a Stencil Printing Workshop on 7 & 14 September 2024. Find out more and book your place:
www.selvedge.org/products/stencil-printing-with-pauline-greuell
Pauline Greuell: A Late Flowering Perennial was first published in Selvedge issue 107: High Summer.
www.selvedge.org/products/stencil-printing-with-pauline-greuell
Pauline Greuell: A Late Flowering Perennial was first published in Selvedge issue 107: High Summer.
‘The smoke tree has these dark red leaves and some really airy blooms that float on top of it. There’s a lovely contrast between the dark, solid shape of the leaves and the almost floating quality of the blooms, which was not at all easy to reproduce’, enthused Pauline Greuell. By her own admission, Greuell is a late starter. It was only in her 50s that she started hand-printing after a career in communications. ‘Becoming a fabric printer and designer was not something I had expected in life’, said with a laugh. ‘I don’t know if I would have been able to do this when I was 20. But I’ve had a long career and I can do this now’. Today she is a stencil artist who works mainly with botanical themes: fluffy dandelion seed heads, flowing tulips, glowing yellow dandelion, a graphic iris design that resembles an art deco print. ‘I love nature and also abstract designs’ she said. Greuell, who lives in Utrecht in the Netherlands, prints using both stencil and screen printing techniques. Because she is self-taught, there is a freshness to her work. But looking back, a lot of the ingredients were already there. She was raised with a love of colour from going to the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum with her grandmother as a child. ‘There were different interior design, furnishing and furniture businesses in my family and so we always had these beautiful fabrics in our home and swatches to play with’ she said. In retrospect, she had a ‘library of memories’ to call on.
For years her creativity was on the back burner. ‘I was insecure and would never have found the confidence to make the things I do now’, she said. She worked on fundraising for the Red Cross, as an editor on a science magazine, and finally ran a project developing dialogue as a means of communication at Wageningen University. But then she went part-time and was inspired to make things for her home. ‘I had been a maker as a child and in my fifties the urge to make came back very strongly, she said. It started almost without me noticing. I was becoming more and more interested in the crafts, and looking up designs on Pinterest. The hand-printed fabrics were beautiful but so expensive. I thought: maybe I can make something like that for myself. I took a course in screen printing in a local studio. I was the odd one out because everyone was designing posters and working on paper, and I was the only person working on fabrics. So there was quite a bit of figuring out what kind of screen and inks I would need. But I really, really loved it’. After three years she left her job to print full-time. In the beginning, she was printing bags with leaf patterns. ‘I sold my first bag through Instagram, then I set up my own website.’
Stencil printing happened by accident when her screen printing studio closed down right when she started printing. ‘It was a huge disappointment but actually, this allowed me to develop my own techniques’ she said. She’d learned stencil printing as a child and it came flooding back. She started out working with mostly one colour. ‘I love blue so I was working with all these different shades of blue from the same ink, some transparent, some very solid or textured. I would get these beautiful gradients’ she said. Even today she avoids strong primary colours in her work. At first, she saw stencilling as a temporary thing to keep herself occupied at the kitchen table –until she could return to the studio. ‘But it soon had me so fascinated that I never stopped’ she said. She loves the spontaneity of stencilling in contrast to exposing the screens ‘which I found slightly static. I would make something I really liked but then I would have to make it over and over again’. She uses Mylar stencils, screen printing ink from the Dutch brand Tinta. And the choice of brushes makes all the difference. On her blog, she meticulously lists what to look out for: ‘An ideal brush will have a long handle, this will give you control over your movements and prints; bristles or hairs that are tightly set into the ferrule (the metal part of the brush); all the bristles need to be exactly the same length, the brush needs to have a perfectly flat end; the bristles need to be bouncy not too soft, stiff but not hard’. She both taps and brushes the ink into the fabric. ‘I alternate in having a normal amount of ink on my brush with having an almost dry brush’.
As a personal project, she began researching wild plants and weeds. ‘Last year, during one of the lockdowns, I found myself taking the same walk from my house to the fields where there are trees and a beautiful stream. I’d see all these weeds growing. For once, I had time to really look at where they grew and how. In the past, I would have noticed plants for their delicate beauty. But now I was noticing the graphic quality of a certain weed, or the contrast in its leaves’ she said. She took cuttings home, started a sketchbook and used the sketches to design new prints. ‘I also used plants that were growing in our garden’. You need to simplify floral patterns to make a stencil ‘and carefully consider how the repeat will work, but as I was looking at plants and would find different ways of approaching the making of the design’, she said. With the clematis for example, she noticed that everything, from flowers to leaves, points in the same direction as the twig. ‘So I used that to develop the pattern’.
In her hands, a spiky cleaver plant that sticks to your clothes becomes an abstract motif. She plays around with the stencil, and only when happy does she think about exact alignment. She enjoys experimenting with different shaped pattern tiles (squares, trapeziums, diamonds), drawn without using the computer, and new colour combinations. A cornflower design, for example, ended up in yellow and ochre. At first, she sold her fabrics as products, or as yardage. ‘But when the pandemic hit and everyone stayed at home, I saw these clear blue skies with no aeroplane stripes, and I thought: ‘This is silly. I am making products and sending them across the ocean, and people are paying large fees for shipping and customs. It seemed really wasteful. I thought maybe it would be interesting for people to make them themselves. So I decided to design some courses’. She began teaching the dozen or so printing techniques she had developed through Zoom. Today online students come from 23 countries. She loves passing on skills but it has also given a real impulse to her own work. One of her latest designs is a chocolate and blue fig leaf print. ‘I designed it last year when our fig tree was heavy with fruit’, she said. I went back to it as part of my course on pattern designing and I also wanted to make a cushion with these colours to coordinate with a certain couch’.
She has just finished work on a large collection of fabrics working and exploring collaborations and licensing opportunities. She loves art deco, adding wavy lines to her plant designs, and has been exploring the abstract motifs of the mid-century modern design and the Wiener Werkstätte. But with her own inimitable twist. And she admits to a surprising obsession with British period drama. ‘I’ve been watching Downton Abbey for the fifth time now and I still discover things in the dress prints they wear. she said with a smile. I love the colours. The directors of photography really are artists in their own right. Lady Cora’s bedroom has these beautiful light blue walls and all these tints of gold, yellow and ochre, so I made a print inspired by those colours’.
Text by Liz Hoggard
Images courtesy of Pauline Greuell
Pauline Greuell: A Late Flowering Perennial was first published in Selvedge issue 107: High Summer.
Pauline will be running a Stencil Printing Workshop on 7 & 14 September 2024. Find out more and book your place:
www.selvedge.org/products/stencil-printing-with-pauline-greuell
For years her creativity was on the back burner. ‘I was insecure and would never have found the confidence to make the things I do now’, she said. She worked on fundraising for the Red Cross, as an editor on a science magazine, and finally ran a project developing dialogue as a means of communication at Wageningen University. But then she went part-time and was inspired to make things for her home. ‘I had been a maker as a child and in my fifties the urge to make came back very strongly, she said. It started almost without me noticing. I was becoming more and more interested in the crafts, and looking up designs on Pinterest. The hand-printed fabrics were beautiful but so expensive. I thought: maybe I can make something like that for myself. I took a course in screen printing in a local studio. I was the odd one out because everyone was designing posters and working on paper, and I was the only person working on fabrics. So there was quite a bit of figuring out what kind of screen and inks I would need. But I really, really loved it’. After three years she left her job to print full-time. In the beginning, she was printing bags with leaf patterns. ‘I sold my first bag through Instagram, then I set up my own website.’
Stencil printing happened by accident when her screen printing studio closed down right when she started printing. ‘It was a huge disappointment but actually, this allowed me to develop my own techniques’ she said. She’d learned stencil printing as a child and it came flooding back. She started out working with mostly one colour. ‘I love blue so I was working with all these different shades of blue from the same ink, some transparent, some very solid or textured. I would get these beautiful gradients’ she said. Even today she avoids strong primary colours in her work. At first, she saw stencilling as a temporary thing to keep herself occupied at the kitchen table –until she could return to the studio. ‘But it soon had me so fascinated that I never stopped’ she said. She loves the spontaneity of stencilling in contrast to exposing the screens ‘which I found slightly static. I would make something I really liked but then I would have to make it over and over again’. She uses Mylar stencils, screen printing ink from the Dutch brand Tinta. And the choice of brushes makes all the difference. On her blog, she meticulously lists what to look out for: ‘An ideal brush will have a long handle, this will give you control over your movements and prints; bristles or hairs that are tightly set into the ferrule (the metal part of the brush); all the bristles need to be exactly the same length, the brush needs to have a perfectly flat end; the bristles need to be bouncy not too soft, stiff but not hard’. She both taps and brushes the ink into the fabric. ‘I alternate in having a normal amount of ink on my brush with having an almost dry brush’.
As a personal project, she began researching wild plants and weeds. ‘Last year, during one of the lockdowns, I found myself taking the same walk from my house to the fields where there are trees and a beautiful stream. I’d see all these weeds growing. For once, I had time to really look at where they grew and how. In the past, I would have noticed plants for their delicate beauty. But now I was noticing the graphic quality of a certain weed, or the contrast in its leaves’ she said. She took cuttings home, started a sketchbook and used the sketches to design new prints. ‘I also used plants that were growing in our garden’. You need to simplify floral patterns to make a stencil ‘and carefully consider how the repeat will work, but as I was looking at plants and would find different ways of approaching the making of the design’, she said. With the clematis for example, she noticed that everything, from flowers to leaves, points in the same direction as the twig. ‘So I used that to develop the pattern’.
In her hands, a spiky cleaver plant that sticks to your clothes becomes an abstract motif. She plays around with the stencil, and only when happy does she think about exact alignment. She enjoys experimenting with different shaped pattern tiles (squares, trapeziums, diamonds), drawn without using the computer, and new colour combinations. A cornflower design, for example, ended up in yellow and ochre. At first, she sold her fabrics as products, or as yardage. ‘But when the pandemic hit and everyone stayed at home, I saw these clear blue skies with no aeroplane stripes, and I thought: ‘This is silly. I am making products and sending them across the ocean, and people are paying large fees for shipping and customs. It seemed really wasteful. I thought maybe it would be interesting for people to make them themselves. So I decided to design some courses’. She began teaching the dozen or so printing techniques she had developed through Zoom. Today online students come from 23 countries. She loves passing on skills but it has also given a real impulse to her own work. One of her latest designs is a chocolate and blue fig leaf print. ‘I designed it last year when our fig tree was heavy with fruit’, she said. I went back to it as part of my course on pattern designing and I also wanted to make a cushion with these colours to coordinate with a certain couch’.
She has just finished work on a large collection of fabrics working and exploring collaborations and licensing opportunities. She loves art deco, adding wavy lines to her plant designs, and has been exploring the abstract motifs of the mid-century modern design and the Wiener Werkstätte. But with her own inimitable twist. And she admits to a surprising obsession with British period drama. ‘I’ve been watching Downton Abbey for the fifth time now and I still discover things in the dress prints they wear. she said with a smile. I love the colours. The directors of photography really are artists in their own right. Lady Cora’s bedroom has these beautiful light blue walls and all these tints of gold, yellow and ochre, so I made a print inspired by those colours’.
Text by Liz Hoggard
Images courtesy of Pauline Greuell
Pauline Greuell: A Late Flowering Perennial was first published in Selvedge issue 107: High Summer.
Pauline will be running a Stencil Printing Workshop on 7 & 14 September 2024. Find out more and book your place:
www.selvedge.org/products/stencil-printing-with-pauline-greuell