71st Annual Juried Exhibition: Deb Strong Napple

What is a printmaker?

by Deb Strong Napple

A printmaker is someone who makes prints, right?

But what does that mean?

As a fine artist who works both in oil painting and printmaking, I have had many conversations start with these questions. When someone meets a painter they know that they are talking with an artist who applies pigments to a canvas in order to make a unique image. They are often not aware that a printmaker does the same thing but uses wood, metal, carving tools, acids, inks, and rollers instead of brushes, knives and paint.

Let's start with a few things that I, as a printmaker, do not do:

• Make photographic or scanner based copies of paintings or drawings.
• Reproduce works made by other artists.
• Use machines to produce large quantities of identical images.
• Click an icon to make a print.

71st Annual Juried Exhibition: Jeff Gola

Liquors by Jeff Gola

I consider my style as expressive realism. It’s a way of working that approaches a certain refinement in some areas but still does not hide the hand of the artist. Although I’ve been painting and drawing for most of my life in a variety of mediums, I’ve been using egg tempera as my primary medium for about 12 years.  I’m drawn to its clarity of color, its crispness and the meditative process that suits my temperament. 

Egg tempera is really not the medium for the quick, momentary impulse.  The process is slow and requires going over the same area many times, crosshatching the quick drying paint in many layers to develop form and to bring out the optical qualities that the medium is known for. Because of that and my attraction to scenes of fleeting light effects, I work on my tempera paintings in the studio, using my personal photos and often pencil sketches with notes.