Anthea Bond grew up in the Midlands and did science at school. She studied dentistry at Edinburgh University, a beautiful city with wonderful views and many art galleries. Dentistry requires a high degree of manual dexterity and this was the reason she chose her career, as a child she had always enjoyed sewing and making things. Later she became an Orthodontist, an NHS specialty concerned with the function and aesthetics of the jaws and teeth. Most of her career was in Stoke-on-Trent, known as the Creative City, full of potters. While working, lots of her spare time was spent in art galleries and museums, both here and abroad.

For the last 20 years, Anthea has adapted her precise manual skills for her enjoyment of the practice of art. She has attended art classes run by the University of Keele, colleges in Staffordshire and privately run courses in different media. For 6 years she has been to short residential print-making courses at Higham Hall in the Lake District. She enjoys using different methods of printing on various papers, with water-washable inks. Several printing presses are available in the studios. Anthea’s favourite techniques are etchings and woodcuts, choosing the medium to suit the subject. Tulip wood or plywood boards are used for the wood cuts. For the etchings, the group uses zinc plates with a smoked hard ground and copper sulphate solution as the etchant. She also likes the monoprint (monotype) techniques of Degas, painting with printing ink on the same sort of zinc plate used for etchings. The plate can be re-used after the monoprint is created in the press. Somerset paper is used routinely for the etchings and monoprints. Her inspiration is mainly from British landscapes and the south or west coast, using her own photographs and sketches made there.