Seasonal Botanical
Contact Print/Eco Print
A 3 Day Workshop
with
Gabrielle Bishop
1st, 2nd & 3rd May 2026
€280
Join multimedia artist Gabrielle Bishop for a transformative three-day workshop, where you’ll explore the art of botanical contact printing on fabric and paper.
This immersive, hands-on experience invites you to connect deeply with natural materials, creative intuition and the quiet revelations of the plant world.
What you’ll experience
Over the course of three days, you will:
Gather colour, form, and inspiration from Mulranny’s beaches, woodlands, gardens, and hillsides.
Connect with the land, plants, and local heritage through guided exploration and foraging.
Learn which plants yield strong prints and natural dyes, and how to harvest and prepare them.
Understand the materials: what fabrics work best, how to scour them, and how to use vegetal and metallic mordants like soy milk, alum, tannins, copper, and iron.
Experiment with techniques for preparing plants, achieving clear or abstract impressions, and enhancing contrast with iron blanket methods.
Explore bundling, folding, rolling, steaming, and hot water processes for developing your prints.
Finish your work: learn how to cure, wash, care for your textiles, document and creatively display your prints.
What you’ll take home
Three unique textile wall hangings, featuring plants gathered from Mulranny’s diverse landscape.
A collection of botanical prints on paper, serving as visual records of time, place, and process.
A comprehensive set of notes on all techniques covered, for continued exploration at home.
Who is this for
This workshop is ideal for:
Artists
Nature lovers
Beginners and experienced printmakers
Anyone seeking a creative, sensory connection with the natural world
No prior experience necessary. All materials provided.
Artist Statement and Bio
Gabrielle is a visual artist who works with natural colour and light, following the rhythm of the seasons. Her work is deeply rooted in place, process, and the living landscape. She gathers colour from her dye garden, the wild surroundings, and travels across Europe to make paints, dyes and inks for her artwork on glass, paper and textiles.
Using techniques both ancient and experimental, Gabrielle creates prints from plants, sealing their forms into fabric and paper with metal salts and vegetal mordants through the alchemy of steam. Her approach is informed by her background in history, heritage, and medieval stained glass, bringing a luminous quality to her work. When lifted to the light, her prints reveal the internal structures of plants, their forms, rhythms, and hidden geometries. These delicate impressions invite the viewer into an intimate, sensory encounter with nature’s unseen layers.
Gabrielle has exhibited widely in Ireland, Spain and England. Her work is held in both public and private collections.
She holds degrees in History from the University of Sussex and Fine Art Painting at GMIT in Ireland. She trained in Stained Glass Painting and Restoration at Lambeth College London and Centre de Vidre de Barcelona.
Gabrielle has worked in museums and stained glass studios across England, Spain, and Portugal. With over 20 years’ experience leading workshops in schools, museums, and community settings, she established Daylight Studios, a creative space dedicated to working with living colour and connecting with the landscape through art.