For years I have been wanting to find a lithographer and make lithographic prints from my drawings. As destiny bowed benevolently granting me in this wish, my husband Serge and I inherited the lithographic press of Léo Marchutz, a follower of Cézanne and great lithographer. The press had not been used since Marchutz's death in 1976. Serge went to Lilles in March for an intensive lithographic workshop at The Lithography Museum. Since his return home, we have been spending our time printing lithographs from my drawings. This new joint adventure is exciting — discovering new ways to draw with the greasy black lithographic crayon to allow the light to exist. Each image has been drawn directly on the stone (or transferred onto the stone from one of my drawings on paper), then pulled from the press on original stones. For now we are working uniquely in black and white, printing limited editions of less than 20 prints per image on Arches BFK paper. All of the stones have been grained after the completion of an edition, where no more prints can be pulled with that image. In the future we will evolve to making color lithographs.

What is Lithography?

Perhaps it is because of the unusual material employed that lithography holds such fascination for artist and layman alike… a lithographic drawing is made with a grease crayon upon the surface of a block of limestone; there is no particular requirement about the drawing save that it leave a deposit of grease upon the stone. After chemical treatment with gum Arabic and nitric acid, an ink-charged roller is passed over the wet limestone. Ink is accepted by the grease image at the same time as it is repelled by the undrawn areas of the stone. A print is obtained by placing a sheet of dampened paper upon the inked stone, which sits on the bed of a lithographic press, and then running the stone, paper, and the necessary backing under the scraping pressure of said press. Lithography, then, is based upon the antipathy between grease and water; it is essentially chemical in nature; it may be considered a surface phenomenon, in that the image on the stone is neither above nor below the surface being printed.

"I desire that soon lithography shall be spread over the whole world, bringing much good to humanity through many excellent productions, and that it may work toward man's greater culture…" Senefelder, 1817 (the inventor of lithography)

Text by Jules Heller in "Printmaking Today", 1958