Featured Artist: Charles Eckart

Monotypes and Monoprints

The monotypes were printed on a clean zinc plate with oil paint or etching ink and transfered to paper via an etching press. Some of the prints have gone through the press a number of times, each time adding more color.

The monoprints use the monotyping process on a previously etched zinc plate. Usually they go through the press twice: first painted with color and secondly with the same plate cleaned and inked with a stiff etching ink.

Ground Cover series

Traditionally in printmaking each plate is assigned one color. In this suite each plate carries a number of colors, each color printed separately. Every print was made from the same three or four plates, some of them carrying as many as eight colors.

This is accomplished by using a square plate which can be rotated 90 degrees on the press, carrying a different color with each rotation. Potentially four colors could be printed from each plate without one color canceling another out.

Like pure painting, with this method a print is made with no pre-planning except for a color idea. The print is simply started from plates that also were etched with no pre-design toward a final print, but which evolve as the process is executed.