Full House for Emma Henderson’s Natural Colour Printmaking Workshop
Artica Svalbard welcomed a full group of participants on Saturday 15 November for Printmaking with Natural Colour, a three-hour workshop led by Scottish artist, producer, and educator Emma Henderson.
Across the morning, the studio was filled with the colours, textures, and subtle alchemy of natural materials as Emma introduced participants to the fundamentals of creating pigments and inks from plants and other organic sources. Beginning with an exploration of raw materials and how to extract colour, the group then moved into transforming these pigments into usable inks tailored for printmaking.
With a focus on screen printing, participants developed simple stencils and experimented with layering their inks, discovering how natural colour behaves differently from commercial alternatives. A highlight of the session was working with natural modifiers—materials that shift the pH of an ink—to reveal surprising changes in hue and expand the palette in unexpected ways.
Emma encouraged a playful, process-led mindset throughout, emphasising the circular, resourceful, and intuitive nature of working with what the environment provides. The result was a morning of curiosity, experimentation, and hands-on making, with each participant leaving with a set of prints and an understanding of sustainable approaches to colour.
Part of Emma Henderson’s NAARCA Exchange
This workshop formed part of Emma Henderson’s residency at Artica Svalbard through the NAARCA Staff Exchange Programme. Joining us from Cove Park, a NAARCA partner residency on Scotland’s west coast, Emma is developing a shared natural printmaking toolkit and beginning a pigment library — a growing, place-based archive of colour created from materials gathered in both Scotland and Svalbard. Supported by Nordisk Kulturfond, her exchange visit emphasises ecological and low-impact approaches to making. The Longyearbyen workshop offered participants a first glimpse into this ongoing project.
About the Artist
Emma Henderson is an artist, producer, and arts educator based in the west of Scotland. Working across printmaking and textiles, she creates natural inks through slow, experimental processes informed by textile histories and craft legacies. Her work draws on feminist traditions of making while exploring sustainable alternatives to printmaking, developing low-impact, circular systems through DIY and low-waste methods. Alongside her artistic practice, she produces place-based projects and public programmes that foster creative learning, connections with nature, and more sustainable ways of living.