Art by Medium: Monotype

This long narrow blue and white monotype was made by carefully arranging hundreds of individual flowers of fresh-cut Dutch clover growing wild. This unique print is the same size as ...

Though this unique monotype looks like a woodcut or linocut, it is not. This is a cyanotype, a kind of lensless photography dating back to the 1800s. This butter yellow cyanotype sta...

This species of tree is a Dancing Peacock Full Moon Japanese Maple or in Latin, acer japonicum aconitifolium. The actual Japanese name is Mai Kujaku. Cyanotypes are a kind of 19th ce...

Although I spent 10 years as a traditional printmaker using a press, my botanical cyanotypes are each one-of-a-kind slow cameraless photographs made outdoors using natural light. The...

Contemporary figurative nude monotype print by Belarussian artist, Siergiej Timochow. Print depicts a woman playing on a double bass. The composition is monochromatic. The paper/card...

Rachel Burgess' landscapes are explorations of memory and the resonance of nature's forms. She begins her artistic process with plein air paintings and drawings which she completes i...

"India" is a woodcut and monotype signed by Carol Summers. Here, Summer's abstract language for landscape imagery is taken to its most extreme: The image offers a view of a highly stylized waterfall, with red water falling down behind green foliage below. A hint of light blue at the lower left suggests a continuation of the water's flow. Above, purples and yellows mist upward from the power of the water. The playfulness of the image is enhanced by Summers' signature printmaking technique, which allows the ink from the woodblock to seep through the paper, blurring the edges of each form. Summers' signature can be found in pencil at the bottom of the rightmost blue form, with the title and edition at the bottom of the leftmost blue form. A copy of this print can be found in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. 37.25 x 24.88 inches, artwork 48.5 x 35.5 inches, frame Numbered 44 from the edition of 75 Carol Summers (1925-2016) has worked as an artist throughout the second half of the 20th century and into the first years of the next, outliving most of his mid-century modernist peers. Initially trained as a painter, Summers was drawn to color woodcuts around 1950 and it became his specialty thereafter. Over the years he has developed a process and style that is both innovative and readily recognizable. His art is known for it’s large scale, saturated fields of bold color, semi-abstract treatment of landscapes from around the world and a luminescent quality achieved through a printmaking process he invented. In a career that has extended over half a century, Summers has hand-pulled approximately 245 woodcuts in editions that have typically run from 25 to 100 in number. His talent was both inherited and learned. Born in 1925 in Kingston, a small town in upstate New York, Summers was raised in nearby Woodstock with his older sister, Mary. His parents were both artists who had met in art school in St. Louis. During the Great Depression, when Carol was growing up, his father supported the family as a medical illustrator until he could return to painting. His mother was a watercolorist and also quite knowledgeable about the different kinds of papers used for various kinds of painting. Many years later, Summers would paint or print on thinly textured paper originally collected by his mother. From 1948 to 1951, Carol Summers trained in the classical fine and studio arts at Bard College and at the Art Students League of New York. He studied painting with Steven Hirsh and printmaking with Louis Schanker. He admired the shapes and colors favored by early modernists Paul Klee (Sw: 1879-1940) and Matt Phillips (Am: b.1927- ). After graduating, Summers quit working as a part-time carpenter and cabinetmaker (which had supported his schooling and living expenses) to focus fulltime on art. That same year, an early abstract, Bridge No. 1 was selected for a Purchase Prize in a competition sponsored by the Brooklyn Museum. In 1952, his work (Cathedral, Construction and Icarus) was shown the first time at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in an exhibition of American woodcuts. In 1954, Summers received a grant from the Italian government to study for a year in Italy. Woodcuts completed soon after his arrival there were almost all editions of only 8 to 25 prints, small in size, architectural in content and black and white in color. The most well-known are Siennese Landscape and Little Landscape, which depicted the area near where he resided. Summers extended this trip three more years, a decision which would have significant impact on choices of subject matter and color in the coming decade. After returning from Europe, Summers’ images continued to feature historical landmarks and events from Italy as well as from France, Spain and Greece. However, as evidenced in Aetna’s Dream, Worldwind and Arch of Triumph, a new look prevailed. These woodcuts were larger in size and in color. Some incorporated metal leaf in the creation of a collage and Summers even experimented with silkscreening. Editions were now between 20 and 50 prints in number. Most importantly, Summers employed his rubbing technique for the first time in the creation of Fantastic Garden in late 1957. Dark Vision of Xerxes, a benchmark for Summers, was the first woodcut where Summers experimented using mineral spirits as part of his printmaking process. A Fulbright Grant as well as Fellowships from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation followed soon thereafter, as did faculty positions at colleges and universities primarily in New York and Pennsylvania. During this period he married a dancer named Elaine Smithers with whom he had one son, Kyle. Around this same time, along with fellow artist Leonard Baskin, Summers pioneered what is now referred to as the “monumental” woodcut. This term was coined in the early 1960s to denote woodcuts that were dramatically bigger than those previously created in earlier years, ones that were limited in size mostly by the size of small hand-presses. While Baskin chose figurative subject matter, serious in nature and rendered with thick, striated lines, Summers rendered much less somber images preferring to emphasize shape and color; his subject matter approached abstraction but was always firmly rooted in the landscape. In addition to working in this new, larger scale, Summers simultaneously refined a printmaking process which would eventually be called the “Carol Summers Method” or the “ Carol Summers Technique”. Summers produces his woodcuts by hand, usually from one or more blocks of quarter-inch pine, using oil-based printing inks and porous mulberry papers. His woodcuts reveal a sensitivity to wood especially its absorptive qualities and the subtleties of the grain. In several of his woodcuts throughout his career he has used the undulating, grainy patterns of a large wood plank to portray a flowing river or tumbling waterfall. The best examples of this are Dream, done in 1965 and the later Flash Flood Escalante, in 2003. In the majority of his woodcuts, Summers makes the blocks slightly larger than the paper so the image and color will bleed off the edge. Before printing, he centers a dry sheet of paper over the top of the cut wood block or blocks, securing it with giant clips. Then he rolls the ink directly on the front of the sheet of paper and pressing down onto the dry wood block or reassembled group of blocks. Summers is technically very proficient; the inks are thoroughly saturated onto the surface of the paper but they do not run into each other. The precision of the color inking in Constantine’s Dream in 1969 and Rainbow Glacier in 1970 has been referred to in various studio handbooks. Summers refers to his own printing technique as “rubbing”. In traditional woodcut printing, including the Japanese method, the ink is applied directly onto the block. However, by following his own method, Summers has avoided the mirror-reversed image of a conventional print and it has given him the control over the precise amount of ink that he wants on the paper. After the ink is applied to the front of the paper, Summers sprays it with mineral spirits, which act as a thinning agent. The absorptive fibers of the paper draw the thinned ink away from the surface softening the shapes and diffusing and muting the colors. This produces a unique glow that is a hallmark of the Summers printmaking technique. Unlike the works of other color field artists or modernists of the time, this new technique made Summers’ extreme simplification and flat color areas anything but hard-edged or coldly impersonal. By the 1960s, Summers had developed a personal way of coloring and printing and was not afraid of hard work, doing the cutting, inking and pulling himself. In 1964, at the age of 38, Summers’ work was exhibited for a second time at the Museum of Modern Art. This time his work was featured in a one-man show and then as one of MoMA’s two-year traveling exhibitions which toured throughout the United States. In subsequent years, Summers’ works would be exhibited and acquired for the permanent collections of multiple museums throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. Summers’ familiarity with landscapes throughout the world is firsthand. As a navigator-bombardier in the Marines in World War II, he toured the South Pacific and Asia. Following college, travel in Europe and subsequent teaching positions, in 1972, after 47 years on the East Coast, Carol Summers moved permanently to Bonny Doon in the Santa Cruz Mountains in Northern California. There met his second wife, Joan Ward Toth, a textile artist who died in 1998; and it was here his second son, Ethan was born. During the years that followed this relocation, Summers’ choice of subject matter became more diverse although it retained the positive, mostly life-affirming quality that had existed from the beginning. Images now included moons, comets, both sunny and starry skies, hearts and flowers, all of which, in one way or another, remained tied to the landscape. In the 1980s, from his home and studio in the Santa Cruz mountains, Summers continued to work as an artist supplementing his income by conducting classes and workshops at universities in California and Oregon as well as throughout the Mid and Southwest. He also traveled extensively during this period hiking and camping, often for weeks at a time, throughout the western United States and Canada. Throughout the decade it was not unusual for Summers to backpack alone or with a fellow artist into mountains or back country for six weeks or more at a time. Not surprisingly, the artwork created during this period rarely departed from images of the land, sea and sky. Summers rendered these landscapes in a more representational style than before, however he always kept them somewhat abstract by mixing geometric shapes with organic shapes, irregular in outline. Some of his most critically acknowledged work was created during this period including First Rain, 1985 and The Rolling Sea, 1989. Summers received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Bard College in 1979 and was selected by the United States Information Agency to spend a year conducting painting and printmaking workshops at universities throughout India. Since that original sabbatical, he has returned every year, spending four to eight weeks traveling throughout that country. In the 1990s, interspersed with these journeys to India have been additional treks to the back roads and high country areas of Mexico, Central America, Nepal, China and Japan. Travel to these exotic and faraway places had a profound influence on Summers’ art. Subject matter became more worldly and nonwestern as with From Humla to Dolpo, 1991 or A Former Life of Budha, 1996, for example. Architectural images, such as The Pillars of Hercules, 1990 or The Raja’s Aviary, 1992 became more common. Still life images made a reappearance with Jungle Bouquet in 1997. This was also a period when Summers began using odd-sized paper to further the impact of an image. The 1996 Night, a view of the earth and horizon as it might be seen by an astronaut, is over six feet long and only slightly more than a foot-and-a-half high. From 1999, Revuelta A Vida (Spanish for “Return to Life”) is pie-shaped and covers nearly 18 cubic feet. It was also at this juncture that Summers began to experiment with a somewhat different palette although he retained his love of saturated colors. The 2003 Far Side of Time is a superb example of the new direction taken by this colorist. At the turn of the millennium in 1999, “Carol Summers Woodcuts...

Color cityscape and landscape with swimmers bathing with friends in a large sapphire blue pool or body of water. This monotype -- a unique painting in ink -- presents an atmospheric scene of European leisure and sports. Turquoise water contrasts with the swimmer's bodies, painted with shades of peach, with black outlines. Paper 35 x 26 in. / 90 x 66 cm. Monotype on white MBM Ingres d'Arches paper. Signed by the artist, annotated "IIC", and dated 1990 lower right in pencil. This large, multi-color monotype depicts a group of young men swimming...

Gail Norfleet earned her BFA at The University of Texas at Austin, and her MFA at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Among others, she has had solo exhibitions in Dallas at The...

Dallas artist Gail Norfleet is best known for her color monotypes, paintings, collages, and paintings on glass. Norfleet earned her BFA at The University of Texas, Austin, and her MFA at Southern Methodist University. Among others, she has had solo exhibitions in Dallas at The McKinney Avenue Contemporary and the former Delahunty and DW Galleries. Gail’s studio and the studios where she teaches serve as the settings for her recent body of work titled "The Studio." The studio is a rich visual environment that has inspired artists for centuries. Gail’s studio is strung with brightly colored Mexican papel picado...

Gail Norfleet earned her BFA at The University of Texas at Austin, and her MFA at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Among others, she has had solo exhibitions in Dallas at The...

David Collins earned a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, and currently lives and works in New York City. Collins has had numerous solo exhibitions in New York, and has exhi...

Gail Norfleet earned her BFA at The University of Texas at Austin, and her MFA at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Among others, she has had solo exhibitions in Dallas at The...

Gail Norfleet earned her BFA at The University of Texas at Austin, and her MFA at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Among others, she has had solo exhibitions in Dallas at The...

Gelatin monotype with acrylic paint on white BFK Rives Printmaking Paper. Approx. image size: 3" x 9" Paper size: 10" x 14" At the core of the dialogue between the artist and the ...

This long narrow monotype was made by carefully arranging hundreds of individual blades of fresh-cut native Californian wild grass. The species of tall marsh grass is called Gray Rus...

This gray and white Japanese-inspired monotype was made using fresh-cut long-stemmed wild iris (iris douglasiana) that grow along the California coast. Their impossibly long stems b...

These are the silhouettes of the native Californian Matilija Poppy also known as giant tree poppies and Coulter's Poppy. They grow over 4 feet tall and appear each year in summer. Al...

Both the natural world and architectural grit have a place in Lisa Breslow's work, highlighting the pull of New York City that is created by these opposing forces side-by-side. She ...

The boat symbolizes the passage of our coming into birth, journeying through life, and eventually guiding us to our last crossing. "...leading us back to the swaying, gliding somnole...

This gray and white Japanese-inspired monotype was made using fresh-cut long-stemmed wild iris (iris douglasiana) that grow along the California coast. Their impossibly long stems b...

This framed work is one-of-a-kind colored pencil & collage on archival pigment print. The work itself is 20" x 16", and it is framed to 26" x 20" in a contemporary, simple white wood...

Large scale black and white stunning abstracted floral still life with sweeping brushstrokes and draped cloth. Lush and painterly composition for minimalist, contemporary and modern ...

The boat symbolizes the passage of our coming into birth, journeying through life, and eventually guiding us to our last crossing. "...leading us back to the swaying, gliding somnole...

Color monotype with collage. Kushner recently completed a series of monotypes, many with collaged decorative papers. He worked from still-lives of flowers, fruits, pitchers and Bett...

Paper 44 x 30 in. / Paper 112 x 76 cm Monotype on white paper. Signed by the artist and dated 1989 lower right in pencil. Annotated G verso. Condition is as new except for a small ...

Contemporary figurative nude monotype print by Belarussian artist, Siergiej Timochow. Print depicts a woman playing on a flute. The composition is monochromatic. The paper/cardboard ...

'Jane' in pink and dark blue. Monotype EV with mixed media hand coloring including ink, gouache, pencils. Ed 1/4. Kim Frohsin, who is often associated with the Bay Area Figurative m...

Faith Bayless Title: Ma + Pa Medium: Woodcut on Monotype Date: 2018 Dimensions: 6"x4"x0.25" COA provided

This is the silhouette of wild mugwort (artemisia) or chrysanthemum weed which grows in the woods in northern California. It is a fragrant herb that smells similar to sage. Though t...

Birch tree branches hang illuminated by t pale blue glow against a deep midnight sky. Neither woodcut nor screen print, this is a double-exposure cyanotype. That means different part...

This long narrow blue and white monotype was made by carefully arranging hundreds of individual flowers of fresh-cut Dutch clover growing wild. This unique print is the same size as ...

INTO THE WILD Size: 29 x 23.5 cm (including frame) Monotype on paper A unique abstract monotype by contemporary British artist Frances Daws, dated 2022 and beautifully presented in ...

Contemporary figurative nude monotype print by Belarussian artist, Siergiej Timochow. Print depicts a woman with a tube. The composition is monochromatic in blue. The paper/cardboard...

Tender, black and white scene of children bundled up in sweaters and hats for snow. Evoking the chilly weather and the spirit of winter holidays, this painterly monotype is ready to ...

Contemporary figurative nude monotype print by Belarussian artist, Siergiej Timochow. Print depicts a woman playing on a saxophone. The composition is in two colors: red and beige. T...

monotype EV —edition variée ed 2/5 with heavy hand coloring. A final work from the artist's mportant Cautionary Tales series, that was her focus throughout 2015. A large and dynamic...

Silver and orange monotype EV —edition variée ed 3/5 with heavy hand coloring. A final work from the artist's mportant Cautionary Tales series, that was her focus throughout 2015. T...

Monotype EV Ed 5/7 with heavy hand coloring with mixed media. Portrait of the artist's mother. Signed front in pencil by Kim Frohsin, who is strongly associated with the Bay Area Fig...

Monotype ev edition 1/3 with hand coloring. The plate (image of ballet slippers) is 15 x 14 inches and the overall paper size is 23 1/2 x 22 inches. Kim Frohsin spent 12 years workin...

Monotype ev edition 5/6 with hand coloring. the overall paper size is 23 1/2 x 23 inches. Kim Frohsin spend 12 years making monotype ev's, and works from this series are included in ...

Woman with red hair in a hat with feather, in green, black and white, Monotype ev edition 5/6 with hand coloring and mixed media work. Kim Frohsin spent 12 years working on monotype ...

Girl's shoes, heels or tap shoes in bronze, black and gold, featured in this Monotype ev edition 8/8 with hand coloring. Kim Frohsin spent 12 years working o...

Oil Monotype Chine Collé on white BFK Rives Printmaking Paper Hand pulled By Artist on Etching Press 13 x 25 inches framed This piece is featured in Bruckner’s 2024 solo exhibition ...

These are two separate 40 x 26 inch cyanotypes (unique monotypes) made using the same tree branches flipped over facing the opposite direction, the result being a symmetrical mirror ...

The intricate pattern seen in each tree leaf is is a combination of painting and photography, the antique cyanotype process. The silhouette of the plant was first drawn, then painted...

The flowers use in this unique monotype are called Coronaria Alba in Latin or by their common name Rose Campion. They grow 2 feet tall with velvety gray-green leaves and white petals...

Though this unique monotype looks like a woodcut or linocut, it is not. This is a cyanotype, a kind of lensless photography dating back to the 1800s, but the artist altered the ratio...

This is a combination of painting and photography, the antique cyanotype process. The silhouette of the plant was first drawn, then painted not with ink or paint, but with light-sens...

Monica DeSalvo’s “What about the numbers?” is a 48 x 24 inch surreal collage built on a digital enlargement of collaged monotype fragments and a black a...

Siergiej Timochow, a Belorussian artist, born in 1960. He studied at an art school in Minsk in 1979 before continuing to study at the Fine Arts Academy in Belarus. His acrylic and ...

Pierre Andre Obando creates process oriented abstract paintings. He was born in Belize City, Belize and grew up in the Caribbean, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Miami, Fl and Jackson, MS. ...

This piece titled "fortress of inseparability" is an original piece by Cassie Normandy White and is made from fabric monotypes and ink. This piec...

“What Fascism Means/Ass of Steel,” is a mixed media work on paper, with ink and textiles. This piece is mixes gestural abstraction and text to create the composition. Liddell often w...

Monotype on paper

Voyaging among humanity words and thoughts of affection and care which fill the air, leaving traces of love. Can you feel them? Angelica’s multi-layered works are informed by her on...

Insects is a beautiful artwork realized by an artist of the 20th century. Original Monotype. In excellent condition. Hand signed on the lower right margin.

Born in 1937 in Breckenridge, Minnesota, Fritz Scholder knew what he must do at an early age. As a high school student at Pierre, South Dakota, his teacher was Oscar Howe...

Monica DeSalvo’s “Threshold” is an 18 x 24 inch surreal mixed media collage comprised of a red and orange acrylic monotype on felt textured paper with cut-out leaf forms, and an abstract collage on cream ledger paper with black distressed writing, brown, gray, and gold. A cluster of images with lily pads connects the two halves. Collage elements include DeSalvo’s late father’s paper memorabilia such as the ledger paper, black and white cavalry horses, and legs sitting in a chair. Print fragments are from work created using a Gelli plate...

Monica DeSalvo’s “We didn’t take the plane—the plane took us!” is a lively 30 x 22 inch surreal collage on paper. Abstract areas of lime green, red, royal blue, and deep yellow embed...

Monotype print.

Though this unique monotype looks like a woodcut or linocut, it is not. This is a cyanotype, a kind of lensless photography dating back to the 1800s, but the artist altered the ratio...

Monica DeSalvo’s “Threshold” is an 18 x 24 inch surreal mixed media collage comprised of a red and orange acrylic monotype on felt textured paper with cut-out leaf forms, and an abstract collage on cream ledger paper with black distressed writing, brown, gray, and gold. A cluster of images with lily pads connects the two halves. Collage elements include DeSalvo’s late father’s paper memorabilia such as the ledger paper, black and white cavalry horses, and legs sitting in a chair. Print fragments are from work created using a Gelli plate...

Though these pale mint green botanical monotypes resemble woodcuts or linocuts they are actually cyanotypes, a form of kind of photography dating back to the 1800s, but the artist al...

Nude figurative by Patricia A. Pearce (American, b. 1948). Initialed "PP" on verso with the artist's name. Presented in a new blue mat with foamcore backing. Image size: 13"H x 11.25...

An abstract mixed media piece using raw walnut monotype, akua on Fabriano Rosaspina 220 gsm paper.

Siergiej Timochow, a Belorussian artist, born in 1960. He studied at an art school in Minsk in 1979 before continuing to study at the Fine Arts Academy in Belarus. His acrylic and ...

"Cabin I" is a Bauhaus-inspired monotype and collage (work on paper) reminiscent of the aesthetic of Le Corbusier. It is part of Bouton’s "Habitat and Urban Matter" series, which is inspired by the straight lines of modernist architecture and hard-edged geometrical forms of the urban environment. Bouton, a French printmaker from Paris who has also lived in London, Myanmar, Ivory Coast, Senegal, and Turkey, creates work that responds to her experiences during her travels and the cultures she encountered. Since settling in the Philadelphia area, she has been inspired by the urbanism of the city, whether a sleek, new apartment block, an abandoned warehouse, or a half-demolished home. Her latest works are interpretations of these buildings, with both broad street views and focused details from single structures –- the pattern of the skyline, a patchwork of broken windows, an industrial color palette. She is drawn to the history of the spaces and lives lived within these buildings, as well as their intrinsic beauty of the structures, whether that beauty emerges from design or degradation, or some combination of the two. Signed and dated. Bouton is a French artist living and working in the Philadelphia area whose boundary-pushing printmaking and paper works exhibit influence from living and working in international cities across the globe. Bouton earned her BFA in Painting and Printmaking and her MFA in Arts and Textile Design from the prestigious ESSAA Duperré in Paris, France. Since leaving Paris 15 years ago, Bouton has lived and exhibited her work internationally in Paris (France), London (UK), Philadelphia (USA), Rangoon (Burma/Myanmar), Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Dakar (Senegal) and Istanbul (Turkey). She has presented solo exhibitions at the Biennale de l’Art Africain...

Siergiej Timochow, a Belorussian artist, born in 1960. He studied at an art school in Minsk in 1979 before continuing to study at the Fine Arts Academy in Belarus. His acrylic and ...

Siergiej Timochow, a Belorussian artist, born in 1960. He studied at an art school in Minsk in 1979 before continuing to study at the Fine Arts Academy in Belarus. His acrylic and ...

Siergiej Timochow, a Belorussian artist, born in 1960. He studied at an art school in Minsk in 1979 before continuing to study at the Fine Arts Academy in Belarus. His acrylic and ...

Artist: Scott Sandell, American (1953 - ) Title: Club Montauk Medium: Mixed Media on Thin Wove Paper, signed, titled Size: 57.5 x 37 in. (146.05 x 93.98 cm)

Monica DeSalvo’s “From here to the end, which isn’t very far away” is a 9.5 x 9.5 inch abstract collage over an acrylic on paper. Golden hair, a bronze wing, clear gemstones, and yellow flowers blend into ethereal violet purple tones accented with lavender dots. Soft gray yarn and a matrix of curved blocks add contrasting textures, enhancing depth. The underlying monotype was made using a Gelli plate...