Print editions can run from a single print to the low hundreds. “Each print in the edition is almost identical – you want them to be the same. Leonard’s own prints are made using four different colour plates, but others, such as Jennifer Lane’s woodcuts, are made from a single block which is recut after every print layer. You’re thinking backwards all the time, just like the old-fashioned typesetting in newspapers where the words would be reversed.” “Even the image is reversed, I think that’s why it attracts wacky people as you have to think backwards. Colour, tone and shade are built up from the lightest first. It’s easiest to imagine printmaking in reverse. ![]() And then you put bitumen on and immerse it in acid – it’s like you’re making a pact with the devil.” The rosin comes from pine trees so you get this wonderful smell. And burn it – there’s a lot of burning going on. We use the same rosin that a violin maker would use on their bow or a ballet dancer would sprinkle on the floor to get a grip. It’s like alchemy that you can get this magic from a sheet of copper. “We like to tell people when they come in that Rembrandt would know how to use our materials. Leonard works mainly in copperplate etching, an intriguing process involving rolling and smoking plates, dipping them in bitumen and adding acid. Silver Bream, woodcut by Jennifer Lane at Graphic Studio Dublin. From specialist papers such as Fabriano and Hahnemuhle to diamond-point needles: “It’s the tiniest tip of a little industrial diamond – you wouldn’t be wearing it on your lapel.” About spit-bite printing she says: “You used to spit into the acid to make it gooey, we don’t any more, we use Fairy Liquid.” Leonard’s talk is peppered with brilliant words and ideas. The Graphic's own collection goes back through the studio's history artists and visiting artists included Tony O'Malley, Louis le Brocquy, Hughie O'Donoghue, Mary Farl Powers, Diana Copperwhite, Mark Francis and more. A stone can last for years, making print after print. The next person to use the stone grinds it down some more. The stones are ground down “like a big thick windowsill” and an artist will etch their work onto the face to create a print. “You can’t get them any more, it’s all quarried out,” Leonard says. Surely the quintessence of material romance, litho stones are made from Bavarian limestone. “It’s the process, there’s a great romance to it.” She describes the warmth of a copper plate, the beauty of the grain in birch wood and as she talks of litho stones, I want to be there too. ![]() Leonard’s frequently dreamy rural scenes belie the pure physicality of making them but, she says, there’s much more to it. The ink, the bitumen… I was completely hooked." "There was nothing down there, no Bord Gáis Theatre, no Harry Crosbie – and I knocked on the door, and then the smell of the place, and I thought: 'Oh my God I'm home'. Leonard describes finding herself, one dark, wet winter evening, in the docklands, staring at a forbidding metal door. Our sons went to the same school, and he said 'Why don't you…?'" Completely hooked Always passionate about print, "I'd been making lino cuts at home, more or less with the back of a spoon, chipping away," she says. ![]() Louise Leonard became a member more than 15 years ago, having taken courses with the Graphic after graduating from NCAD in the late 1990s. Now in a lofty former brewery in Dublin's docklands, and with a gallery in Temple Bar, the studio's members are gearing up for some (safe) celebrations. The studio was founded by five artists, one of whom was Anne Yeats, daughter of WB himself. While printmaking is almost as old as art itself, Graphic Studio Dublin celebrates its birthday this year, marking 60 years since the printmakers first opened in a basement on Dublin's Mount Street.
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