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AFFORDABLE ART:There is a perception that prints are the poor relations of the art world, but one studio in particular is proving the naysayers wrong, with the enthusiastic support of some of Ireland’s most respected artists

HIDDEN AWAY, almost under the railway lines that come into Connolly Station in Dublin, is Stoney Road Press. This is an unusual sort of artists’ studio. It’s full of the fascination of a studio – for here is where work gets made, and where that almost magical process that turns ideas and images from the imagination into marks on a page occurs. Artists’ studios are captivating places; you find sheets of pristine paper, blank canvases, pots or tubes of paint, objects that the artist has gathered (some peculiar, some familiar), and fragments of work, the sketches and abandoned canvases, as well as finished works. They’re generally not terribly tidy, although Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, famous for his geometric lines and coloured squares, was so fanatical about his own studio that he would apparently get upset if even an ashtray was moved.