Artist Rosalind Forster’s Moveable Feast

“Every now and then, you discover a new artist and, through her work, a whole new way of seeing the world. I had such an experience when I came across the work of Rosalind Forster who, since 1989, has been dividing her time between the quiet, Saronic Gulf island of Spetses and the lush green countryside of Derbyshire, creating impressive watercolors and linocut prints reflecting both landscapes. Forster’s rare bone cancer now limits her ability, physically, to execute the complex linocuts she produced early in her career but makes her continuing creation of artworks even more imperative for her.”—Stella Sevastopoulos 

For Art’s Sake

By Stella Sevastopoulos

“The sun had gone down but the trees and the first houses of Kampos were still glowing with the sunlight they had been storing up since dawn. It seemed to be shining from inside them with the private, interior radiance of summer in Greece that lasts for about an hour after sundown so that the white walls and the tree trunks and the stones fade into the darkness at last like slowly expiring lamps.”—Patrick Leigh Fermor

ATHENS GREECE—(Hubris)—September/October 2025—Every now and then, you discover a new artist and, through her work, a whole new way of seeing the world. I had such an experience when I came across the work of Rosalind Forster who, since 1989, has been dividing her time between the quiet, Saronic Gulf island of Spetses and the lush green countryside of Derbyshire, creating impressive watercolors and linocut prints reflecting both landscapes. Forster’s rare bone cancer now limits her ability, physically, to execute the complex linocuts she produced early in her career but makes her continuing creation of artworks even more imperative for her.

Born in London in 1948, a graduate of the Walthamstow Art School, where renowned pop artist Peter Blake taught, Forster went on to study Art and Design at the Manchester School of Art before embarking on a graphic design career in London. In 1973, however, she left the capital and moved north to Derbyshire.

Forster says, “After some years working in London for a design group as a package designer, I moved to Derbyshire as I wanted to buy a house, and prices in London were beyond me. I worked partly in London and at home. I eventually got fed up with yet another tin of dog food to design and gave that up. I worked freelance for the theater in Derby and the national park and set up a print workshop to print my posters with silk screen. These posters for the Derby Playhouse and Winster Wakes have now become collector’s items.”

In 1989, like a real-life Shirley Valentine, Forster was drawn to Spetses, after meeting her future husband there. Life on the picturesque Saronic isle, with its pine-clad landscapes, crystal clear sea, and almost carless town center, became more and more attractive. “I gradually spent more and more time on Spetses as it was such a lovely way of life,” says Forster, “such fun while Kariofillis was working on a tourist boat with Greek nights and lots of singing and dancing in the tavernas. But more importantly, Spetses was such wonderful inspiration for work. The light really knocked me out and I started painting and drawing there and then translating the paintings into linocuts when back in England in my workshop.”

Forster installed a grand Albion press in her home in Derbyshire, where she created her linocuts, using the reduction process. This involves gradually cutting away from one block, making prints from each iteration of the image and using a different color for each print: Forster’s final prints sometimes involved 16 different pressings and colors. It is a complex, painstaking process which yields prints of extraordinary depth. 

Forster was drawn to this method of printing after seeing Picasso’s use of it. She says, “I started making linocuts after seeing the Picasso show of them in London and another printmaking show at The Mall. I spent ages gazing at them and working out how they were done and thought ‘I want to do that.’ My first ones were in simple black and white, with the use of a wooden spoon as a baren, and then I found a wonderful Albion press. The reduction method is a risky but also a very expressive and exciting method of printmaking and, after nearly 40 years, I feel confident in the technique.”

Forster’s watercolors are quite different—complex color compositions full of delicate tonal variations and chromatic hues that explore light’s myriad patterns and effects—visual odes to nature. “I started painting in watercolors after studying lithography, which is a painterly printmaking technique, and so I painted rather as a printmaker does, building up rich layers of color. When painting a still life, I work from it directly, but also photograph it to fix shadows, as I work quite slowly and the flowers may die before the painting is finished.”

Forster says she usually paints commissioned pieces and landscapes from photographs because it is too hot on Spetses much of the yeat to work plein air, and she likes to work quietly in her studio where she can concentrate. 

Forster’s has exhibited widely, with shows in Australia, England, and Greece in particular. Her works are also in state and private collections including the Mitchel Library, in Sydney, Australia, on the cruise ships P & O Orianna and Swan Hellenic Minerva as well as in various city councils, galleries, and the Duke of Devonshire’s private collection.

“Australia was a real turning point in terms of success and I loved the native flora,” says Forster. “Seeing the enormous lily Gymea and drawing it in a cottage I was lent and my subsequent travels were pretty memorable. Being commissioned for paintings and linocuts on P & O Orianna and Swan Hellenic Minerva were also high points for me.”

For Forster, art is about the experience of the beauty around her and translating it into art that can communicate that beauty to a viewer. She says, “The most important part of my practice? Well, it’s just being able to work every day and respond to the beautiful places I find myself in. And to have people love my work and want it. It thrills me that all over the world people have it in their homes and enjoy living with it.”

Forster sells through her UK website, Rosalind Forster/Artist/Printmaker, as well as through Artfinder and other online sites. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram as well.