The artist and the printer: A creative partnership unlike any other
- Irene Michnicki
- Jul 10
- 9 min read
Updated: Jul 24
Whether the medium is lithography, intaglio, relief, screenprint or monotype, some of the finest print work has emerged from the genuine creative dialogue between an artist and printer working together. Understanding that dialogue changes how you think about what a print actually is, how it was made and how the collaborative effort produces artwork that wouldn't exist under any other context.
Ask any artist who has worked closely with an experienced printer on an edition, and you will hear some version of the same story: at some point in the process, something unexpected happened. A color combination turned out differently than envisioned. Certain drawing materials on a litho stone revealed a texture no one had planned for. A woodblock's grain pushed the image somewhere new. A proof came off the etching press with a quality the plate had not quite promised. And the work was better because of it. The collaborative model of fine art printmaking depends on exactly this kind of generative surprise, whether the process is lithography, intaglio, relief, or any of the other disciplines that together make up the tradition of the hand-pulled print. The surprise, though, is not accidental. It is the product of a very particular kind of working relationship, one that has its own history, its own ethics, and its own craft.
The nature of that collaboration was examined in depth across multiple issues of The Tamarind Papers, the journal published by Tamarind Institute in New Mexico from 1974 to 1992. Though the journal focused primarily on lithography, the conversations it hosted reached across the full spectrum of printmaking practice. Taken together, these articles form something rare in the literature of art: an extended, practical, and often quite frank account of what it actually means to make work together at a press. For any artist considering a collaborative printmaking project in any medium, or any printer reflecting on their own practice, they remain essential reading.
Two experts in the room
The foundational insight that runs through all of these accounts is deceptively simple: in the best print collaborations, both the artist and the printer are experts, and their expertise is genuinely different. This holds true regardless of medium. In stone lithography, the printer's expertise lies in understanding the chemistry of grease, water, and limestone, and how each drawing material will behave through the etching and printing process. In intaglio work, that expertise shifts to the behavior of acid on metal, the varied qualities of engraved, drypoint, and aquatint mark making, and the exacting demands of printing from an incised plate. In relief printing, it means understanding how ink sits on the raised surface of a woodblock or linocut, and how ink consistency and printing pressure pressure shapes the final impression. In monotype, where each impression is by definition unique, it means reading the ink on the plate in real time and knowing when printing will yield what the image needs.
Groupings of monotypes by Allan MacIntyre from February 2026 in which he explored the concepts of Obake, a shape-shifting spirit or monster in Japanese folklore (above) and brightly colored volcanoes exploding (below).
In a panel discussion published in The Tamarind Papers Vol. 8 (1985), master printer Irwin Hollander and curator Gustave von Groschwitz reflected on decades of working at the intersection of artistic vision and printmaking craft. Their conclusion was that the most successful collaborations were not those in which the artist dictated and the printer executed, but those in which both parties were genuinely engaged with the technical and aesthetic possibilities of the medium as it unfolded in real time.
The artist brings the image; the printer brings the knowledge of what the stone will and won't do. When those two things meet honestly, you get something neither person could have planned for.
— Paraphrased from Hollander, Adams, and von Groschwitz, The Tamarind Papers, Vol. 8 (1985)
While Hollander and von Groschwitz were speaking specifically about lithography, the principle extends to every printmaking discipline. An artist who is a virtuoso draftsman may have no understanding of how different strengths of etches will open up and stabilize a passage of tusche wash on a stone, or how a relief impression will read differently depending on whether the paper is dampened. The printer holds that knowledge. The artist holds something the printer cannot supply: the visual intelligence, the sense of where the image is going, and what it needs to say. The collaboration is productive precisely because neither person can do the other's job.
What a collaborative printer actually does
Leonard Lehrer's essay in the same 1985 volume of the Tamarind Technical Papers, "Artist and Printer: Some Matches Are Made in Heaven and Others...," is a pretty honest account of what makes the relationship between a printer and artist succeed or collapse. Lehrer argues that a good collaborative printer must be technically expert enough to solve problems the artist does not know exist, artistically sensitive enough to recognize when a technical decision is actually an aesthetic one, and communicative enough to keep the artist informed at every stage.
The specific problems, visual and technical, differ by medium.
In lithography, a printer navigates the balance between guiding the artist in choosing the best drawing materials for their vision, the etching process. Then once the final proof has been approved, the process of printing an edition in which all the prints look the same, without the image filling or having problems, requires precise control in mixing modifying and rolling out ink. In intaglio, the materials and etching process are direct equivalents with different chemistry and the challenge in printing involves the wiping of a plate so that ink remains on the plate in the same way in a repeatable manner. In relief printing, the printer controls the consistency and application of the ink carefully enough that finest lines and marks do not fill and lose detail within the image. In all the mediums, printing with multiple overlapping layers requires a great deal of technical expertise in registration, or the way that the matrices and paper relate in order to have everything align. Printing in color also presents its own unique set of challenges and a knowledge of color theory, pigments and a connection to the artist's color sensibility are extremely important. In each case, these are technical decisions that carry aesthetic consequences, and a collaborative printer who understands the difference and connection between the visual and technical, and who can communicate clearly about both, is the one who makes genuine collaboration possible.
Lehrer also writes openly about what happens when the match is bad: when an artist's working style clashes with a printer's temperament, when project expectations go unspoken and unmet, when the chemistry between collaborators simply does not work. The workshop context makes these failures more visible than they would be in a solo practice. It forces both parties to think carefully about what they actually need from each other before they walk up to the press.
On trust and the proofing stage
One of the most revealing moments in any printmaking collaboration comes at the proofing stage, the period when trial impressions are pulled and assessed before the full edition is printed. Proofs are not just technical checkpoints; they are negotiations. Whether the artist is seeing a stone lithograph, an etching, a woodblock, or a monotype impression for the first time, the experience is often the same: the image as it actually exists in print sometimes differs extensively from what they had imagined at the drawing, carving or creation stage. The printer reads the artist's reaction and translates it into the next round of adjustments. How that conversation goes determines the quality of everything that follows and an open, honest line of communication here is crucial.
The historical roots of fine art printmaking
The collaborative tradition in printmaking is not an invention of the twentieth century, though the contemporary workshop model gave it new institutional form. A historical study by Larry D. Perkins published in The Tamarind Papers Vol. 11 (1988), titled "Artistic Printing: Collaborative Printing during the Etching Revival and Early Twentieth Century," traced this tradition back to the etching revival of the 1860s and 70s. During that period, a generation of painters, most notably James McNeill Whistler and Francis Seymour Haden, understood that working closely with a skilled printer was not a concession to technical limitation but a creative opportunity.
What Perkins's study reveals is that the printers of the etching revival were themselves making artistic decisions. Their choices about inking, wiping, paper selection, and impression pressure could transform the visual character of a plate from one edition to the next. Whistler was famously attentive to these variables, sometimes varying the inking of a single intaglio plate deliberately to produce different expressive effects across an edition. The printer was not a passive instrument in this process. The tradition of collaborative fine printing, understood as a genuinely creative partnership, runs directly from these nineteenth-century intaglio workshops through to the lithographic revival at Tamarind and the full-spectrum printmaking studios of the present day.
Each medium, its own syntax
Ruth Weisberg's essay "The Syntax of the Print: In Search of an Aesthetic Content," which you can find in The Tamarind Papers Vol. 9, No. 2 (1986), takes a look at collaboration from the artist's point of view. Weisberg dives into the idea that prints have their own unique visual language, or syntax, that comes from the specific qualities of each medium. For example, the way lithographic ink settles on paper is totally different from how intaglio ink is pulled out of incised grooves under pressure. And let’s not forget about relief prints, which give a direct, slightly embossed impression. Then there's the monotype, which has its own special vibe: it's painterly, immediate, and you can't replicate it.
What Weisberg really highlights is that this syntax of each print process carries a lot of aesthetic weight. Choosing a medium isn't just a technical choice; it's a creative one. Trying to capture a subject that is begging for the soft, glowing crayon marks of stone lithography but using the sharp, linear style of engraving instead—talk about mismatched! Similarly, if you have imagery that thrives on the spontaneous, painterly qualities of a monotype, forcing it into the stricter, repetitive world of editioning could really take away from its essence. When an artist and a printer click, they’re essentially speaking the language of their chosen medium fluently, and they’re making those choices for all the right reasons. A great collaborative printer is like a guide, helping the artist find the best form to convey their work’s meaning.
The printer's own artistic voice
One of the more complex questions in the literature of collaborative printmaking is whether, and to what degree, the printer's own aesthetic sensibility should enter the collaboration. The Tamarind Papers address this question repeatedly and never quite resolve it, which is probably appropriate. Most individuals participating in the practice of collaborative printmaking agree that a printer who effaces their own judgment entirely will produce technically competent but aesthetically inert work, whether in lithography, etching, or relief. Most also agree that a printer who pursues their own vision at the expense of the artist's will have overstepped their role. The productive space between these two positions is where the real work happens.
The printer as translator
One of the most useful ways to think about the collaborative printer's role is as a translator, someone who works fluently between two languages neither of which they invented. The first language is the artist's: their visual intentions, their emotional investment in the image, and their sense of what the work needs to say. The second is the medium's: the particular materiality and chemistry of stone, plate, block, or any matrix, the behavior of paper under pressure, and the specific constraints and possibilities of each printmaking discipline. The printer's job is to find the version of the first language that can be expressed in the second without loss of meaning. If this job is done particularly well, the artist's work speaks clearly.
This framing helps explain why the best print collaborations feel truly creative to both parties, regardless of which process is involved. The artist is not simply having ideas realized; they are discovering, through the printer's informed translation, aspects of their own work that could not have surfaced any other way. A lithographic stone, an etched copper plate, a carved woodblock: each of these matrices is a kind of mirror. They are honest, sometimes unflattering, and never exactly what you expected. The printer is the person who holds the mirror steady and helps you see what is actually there.
At Milestone Graphics
we've been holding that mirror since 1976, working across stone and plate lithography, intaglio, and relief. Our approach to collaboration has always been founded on the conviction that the artist's vision and the printer's craft are not in competition but in conversation, and that the most interesting results come when both sides of that conversation are fully engaged. If you are thinking about a print project, in any medium, we would be glad to begin that conversation with you.
Sources
The Tamarind Papers, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1985). "Life and Work: Thoughts of an Artist-Printer" by Irwin Hollander, Clinton Adams, and Gustave von Groschwitz
"Artist and Printer: Some Matches are Made in Heaven and Others..." by Leonard Lehrer. Vol. 11, No. 1 (1988).
"Artistic Printing: Collaborative Printing during the Etching Revival and Early Twentieth Century" by Larry D. Perkins. Vol. 9, No. 2 (1986).
"The Syntax of the Print: In Search of an Aesthetic Content" by Ruth Weisberg. Vol. 6, No. 1 (1982).
"Robert Blackburn: An Investment in an Idea" by Elizabeth Jones;
"The Personality of Lithography: A Conversation with Nathan Oliviera" by Clinton Adams. University of New Mexico Digital Repository.
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