THERE’S a lot of creativity in Wiltshire at the moment. Firstly, there’s Wiltshire Creative, the pan-arts organisation behind the Playhouse, the Arts Centre and more. Then there’s Creative Wiltshire, a five-year project that celebrates creativity in the county – their latest exhibition, A Celebration of Art is currently on at Salisbury Museum until early May.

From this Saturday, Fisherton Mill plays host to Strictly Printing, a rich and resonant show of work by a third such grouping: Wiltshire Print Creatives. As the name suggests, this is a collective of printmakers living across the county. There are a dozen artists in the group, who originally came together two years ago via a studio in Trowbridge. The Fisherton Mill exhibition is the first time their work has been shown together in Salisbury.

This week, I caught up with Jane Temperley, one of the group’s members. She explained how she discovered printmaking about ten years ago after a career in design. Printmaking encompasses a number of different techniques, including silkscreen, linocut, digital, etching and drypoint, and Jane explained how monotype printing in particular was a technique that inspired her.

Part of printing’s allure can be its speed: compared to a painting that may takes days or weeks to compose, the timing of a printwork is dictated by length of time it takes the paint to dry. Jane described how she enjoys both the expressiveness of the artform and the ability to experiment via mark making or adding texture and colour. While a painting can slowly come together, a print has that ‘ta da’ moment, when the finished work is revealed. As an artist, you’re never quite sure how the finished article is going to pan out – an added unpredictability that Jane clearly also really likes.

As a group, Wiltshire Print Creatives offers a wide variety of styles, from Martin Covington’s White Horse linocuts to Susanne Trevalyn’s collagraphs of Charmouth Beach. One theme that runs throughout a number of the artist’s work is that of celebrating nature and the nearby countryside. When I asked Jane why this was, she suggested that there was something special about living in a landscape dominated by chalk – the rolling hillsides it creates are particularly tempting to try and capture in ink.

Printmaking might not be the most obvious artform to take up, but for those interested, members of the group will be present at the exhibition each Saturday in March to talk about their work – they’ll also bring examples of printing plates to explain more about the techniques that they use. So if you’re interested in joining the county’s creatives, visiting Fisherton Mill could be a good place to start.

Strictly Printing is at Fisherton Mill from March 2-30.