About my Screenprints
Drawings for a screen print.
My screen prints are hand-printed in limited editions. Most of the prints are 13x10 inches or 12 inches square. The starting point for a print might be a landscape that I know well, or one that I know only fleetingly. A place as it appears in a finished print could be based on a single location or could be a composite.
I start by making black-and-white drawings in ink, pencil or crayon on translucent vellum – a separate drawing for each color I plan to print. Screen printing is a stencil process. Once I have completed the drawings, I use a light-sensitive emulsion to transfer the images to silkscreens. In a dark room, I drag an even coat of the emulsion across a screen (a frame with a taut mesh). When it's dry, I expose the screen, with a drawing in close contact, to UV light. This creates a stencil of the drawing, with all the details and nuances. I then mix colors and use a squeegee to pull ink through the screen and print the image onto paper. I print one color at a time on each piece of paper in an edition, building the image from background to foreground as I add successive layers over the course of days or weeks. Many of my finished prints are accumulations of ten to twenty printed layers.
As I work, the source materials are transformed by qualities inherent to the medium of screen printing. The path from start to finish is rarely a straight line. The digressions along the way, the discovery and revision, influence the outcome. I feel that the subject matter is reflection, memory and time as much as it is landscape.
In this digital age I am drawn more than ever to the tradition of printmaking, and to hand-printing an edition. I like the challenge of creating a fine art image using a medium best known for commercial applications.
Fine art prints are original works of art, not reproductions. For information about purchasing prints seen on this site, please contact me at williamwaitzman@gmail.com