Collecting Data, Creating Art: The Captivating World of Creative Filmmaking with Printmaker Rachael Clewlow
One of the things I find most exciting about working in creative filmmaking is discovering how artists translate their ideas into meticulously crafted works of art.
When I was filming for Northern Print’s Glossary exhibition in 2014, I had the opportunity to document the captivating practice of Printmaker Rachael Clewlow, an artist whose work bridges data, journeys, and striking visual compositions. For me, telling stories like hers is central to documenting artistic process — shining a light on how deeply personal experiences transform into complex visual languages.
Rachael Clewlow is fascinated by recording her movements through the world. Whether mundane errands or unusual encounters, she meticulously logs every journey she takes. In her words, “I record my journeys everywhere I go. All the kind of can be from the banal to the interesting to the freak things that happen on a daily basis.” These records then become part of a sophisticated mapping system, categorised into colour-coded groupings that capture not just locations, but the essence of her travels.
Printmaking offers Rachael something she hasn’t found in painting. She explains that print allows her to create overlays and flat, crisp colour separations that aren’t possible with paint. The print she was working on for Glossary was a nine-colour screenprint — but through colour overlaps, it would ultimately contain as many as 48 distinct hues. It’s a technique that gives her extraordinary control over both colour and form.
“Basically, I use print as a way to experiment with things that I can’t do with painting. I haven’t found a way to overlay paint the way that I want to. I want it to lie flat against the surface and also use the transparencies.”
Rachael’s process is deeply methodical, reflecting her background in recording data and working with systems. She brings the same precise discipline to her colours. Mixing paints for printmaking presented a fresh challenge: unlike in her painting practice, where she might mix only tiny quantities, screen printing demands significant volumes of ink for each layer. For this project, she had to mix nine specific colours, beginning with an off-white base layer that sits beneath the entire composition.
Tied closely to her mapping system, the artwork includes text listing places she passes, grid references, dates, times, and precise colour combinations — all drawn from her life and transformed into visual rhythm.
“This is a list of all places which I pass along this side. We have a grid reference point, so that’s according to the A to Z map of Newcastle. The date, the time, and the color combination that stripes are going to be in.”
While digital printing can produce perfect, repeatable results, Rachael loves how screen printing introduces the presence of the artist’s hand. Subtle imperfections, handwritten text, and tiny shifts from one print to the next bring her highly systematic work back into the realm of human touch.
“With screen printing, you add in an element of the artist hand… I think the handwritten text kind of adds a little bit more of that artist hand feel to it.”
This connection between systems and intuition is part of what makes Rachael’s story so compelling for me as someone devoted to creative filmmaking. Her art is rigorously planned, yet always carries a trace of unpredictability. She admits that she never knows exactly how the final image will appear until it’s complete — and she’s not prepared to adjust the system mid-way. “Once I start printing, it either works or it doesn’t work. And if it doesn’t work? I don’t really know what’ll happen.”
Fortunately, during the making of this film, things were going very well for Rachael. As she says toward the end of the shoot: “But I’m really happy with it. It’s going really well.”
For anyone interested in documenting artistic process, Rachael’s practice offers a brilliant glimpse into how personal narrative, data, and artistic experimentation converge to create something visually striking and conceptually rich.
You can see more of my work capturing artists and their creative processes on my artist films page: https://alanfentiman.co.uk/vimeo-videos/artist-films/