lucelleRAAD

What is a Silkscreen Serigraph?

A serigraph is a color print made by a silk screen printing process. Screen printing is the first major new arrival in the printmaker’s repertoire since the development of lithography. It involves the use of stencils as a means of speeding the process of hand coloring.

The principle is straightforward. Ink is pushed through the tiny holes of a stencil, which is normally made of a fine nylon or polyester mesh — real silk screens are rarely used today. Selected areas of the screen are blocked out and consequently the ink is prevented from penetrating to the paper below. By this simple means, complex images can be achieved. A new screen is made for every change of color in the design, often fifty or more.

Screen printing offers creative opportunities never before available to the artist. Images can be assembled in many ways: by drawing or painting onto the screen with liquid screen fillers; by cutting paper or fabric and laying this over the screen surface, or by photographically transferring images and motifs. The surface can in fact be made up as a montage, offering great flexibility and creative potential to the artist.

During printing new colors are applied individually to the paper through each successive screen, building up the image and all-important texture step by step. Each screen carries a separate part of the final image. Ink can be opaque or highly translucent and the color of screen prints is inevitably strong and bright.

Lucelle’s publisher, London Contemporary Art, is recognized in the art world for its exceptionally high quality reproductions. Under Lucelle’s supervision they have created of her work a truly unique body of serigraphic images, each as close in appearance to an original as the printer’s art can produce. Imprinted on thick, museum-quality paper, a Lucelle Raad silk screen serigraph may be treasured as much for its material composition as for its form, color and feeling.