The aim of Pamela Griffith’s talk is to share techniques and stories about how to survive as a printmaker. Pamela will bring along some plates and prints and talk about etching techniques. She will also show us two newly published books on her work. Pamela Griffith: Etchings 1965 – 2014 (Lou Klepac, Beagle Press, 2026) is a monograph focusing on Pamela’s etching and the history of printmaking in Australia. The other book, Pamela Griffith a biography (Joanna Mendelssohn, Wakefield Press, 2026) looks more broadly at Pamela’s extensive artistic achievements.

Both the Griffith Studio and Graphic Workshop and the Newcastle Printmakers Workshop were created at about the same time in the seventies. Pamela and NPW founding member Patricia Wilson-Adams both studied etching at the National Art School. Both women already had etching skills acquired elsewhere and were practising artists. Both dreamt of creating workshops specifically for printmakers. These days Pamela uses her workshop for her own prints and the occasional visit from experienced and devoted printmakers who need a place to print. It is with great delight that Pamela is at last visiting Newcastle Printmakers Workshop, and she looks forward to the opportunity to congratulate NPW members on the workshop’s longevity and success.

About Pamela Griffith

Pamela Griffith b.1943 belongs to an artistic family; her grandmother was a painter, her mother was a potter, and her brother is an artist. She is a painter, a printmaker, a teacher and an author of two books.

With a scholarship for studying art education, she attended the East Sydney Technical College. There she became interested in etching, but as this was no longer taught at the art school, she taught herself to etch from a book and adapted a washing mangle to print her first etchings. Eventually she had a press made in Australia which was later further developed with the help of her engineer husband Ross.

In 1976 she set up the Griffith Studio and Graphic Workshop with facilities and technical expertise to promote etching, making the studio available to artists who were interested in printmaking. Many now well-known artists came to work in her studio which became a hub for the new wave of printmaking in the 1960s and 70s.

Griffith has been fascinated by the natural world and established an intimate knowledge of the Australian fauna, flora and landscape by travelling across Australia in a caravan or camping in a tent. These experiences became an important component of her subject matter.

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