Behind the Art

All works in Friends and Mentors are limited edition prints made from a printmaking process called lithography. The term ‘lithograph’ is a combination of two Greek words: ‘litho’ meaning stone and ‘graph’ meaning to write.

The drawing for a lithograph is executed on a piece of flat, fine-grained, porous limestone or on a zinc plate with grease-based ink or crayons. The stone or plate is then covered with water or a chemical solution which adheres only to the no-greased areas; ink applied at this stage adheres only to the greased areas. Paper is placed on top of the plate and the two are run through a special lithographic press to transfer the ink to the paper. An exact replica is transferred from the stone to the paper in reverse. By re-inking the stone, a number of prints can be made from the same image.

When two or more colors are used, they are applied one at a time with each color having its own plate. Each plate carries only those parts of the image which are to appear in the color of ink to be used on that plate. Color lithography requires great concentration and skill in order to keep colors from overlapping each other where they are not supposed to overlap, and to ensure they do overlap properly in areas in which the artist wants them to overlap.

Although it has been used as a printing process for almost two centuries, lithography as a means for creating art-works has only been popular in Alberta for a few decades. Between the discovery of the process by Bavarian playwright Aloys Senefelder in 1798, and John Snow’s introduction of it to Calgary in 1953, very few lithographic artworks were produced in the province because so little was known about the process. Senefelder experimented with it as a means of duplicating his plays; Snow, Bates and Smylie explored it for its potential as a means of visual self expression.

Richard L. White