Biography

Paul Croft qualified as a Master Printer at the Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque in 1996 and is now Head of Printmaking at the School of Art in Aberystwyth. As a printmaker Croft works mainly with processes of stone, plate and waterless lithography and his work has been exhibited widely throughout the UK and internationally in Japan, China, Hong Kong and USA. As Master Printer he has collaborated with several artists including Marcelle Hanselaar, Pete Williams, Stuart Pearson Wright, Shani Rhys James, David Tress and Wuon Gean Ho. He has written and published two books on Stone Lithography (2001) and Plate Lithography (2003)

Exhibition

Space Between: Developing Digital Lithography
Space Between: Developing Digital Lithography Building upon research that was completed for Developing Digital Tusche Wash for Photoplate Lithography – presented as a workshop at IMPACT07 at Monash University, Melbourne in 2011 – this small curated exhibition of approximately fifteen prints explores the interface between traditional and digital techniques of printmaking and demonstrates the potential for a fully digitised approach to lithography.

Since participating in two international portfolio projects in 2008 that encouraged cross-disciplinary working, I have become increasingly interested incorporating digital methods of working with traditional techniques of stone and plate lithography. In 2011, working with the computer software programmes Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter 12, I was able to demonstrate how it is possible to develop digitally engineered tusche wash and how this can be applied on screen in a relatively authentic and lithographic manner.

Since Melbourne there has been opportunity to develop this process of digitising tusche further and to explore how lithographic prints can be made using both a combination of digital and conventional techniques as well as producing work that is conceived in wholly digital terms.

The work in this exhibition thus comprises of a range of images that trace the development of this research – from relatively early prints (2008) that have used basic cut-and-paste technology, to more sophisticated use of digital tusche wash drawn using a pressure sensitive graphics tablet, outputted on to film, exposed to plate and printed lithographically and finally, the most recent prints that have been conceived and printed entirely digitally.

Open Folio

Collaborations: Aberystwyth Paper Press Print
Collaborations: Aberystwyth Paper Press Print is a portfolio celebrating the diversity of printmaking from traditional to digital. Each of the 30 professional artists, staff and students participating in this project have had some form of contact with the print studio at The School of Art Aberystwyth between 2000-2012. Artists were encouraged to be experimental and processes include combination of print media, traditional and digital processes, hybrid prints as well as more inter-disciplinary activity such as prints developing from photography, film and video. Artists were also asked to reflect upon their own practice and to produce a print that is representative of their current work.