Chuck McCoy

For years I’ve worked with master printers in Santa Fe and Denver to produce monotypes at their studios. Collaborating with a master printer allows me the luxury of concentrating on the art making process and nothing else. There is a back and forth throughout the day figuring out what techniques and results are working best. I find I can be really productive and create better pieces working with someone who has an encyclopedic knowledge of printing techniques.

For the past couple of years, I’ve worked in another form of printing: digital inkjet, CnC routing and laser engraving. I’ll go back and forth working with traditional analog media like painting, drawing and applying paper combined with digital media such as inkjet, CnC routing and laser engraving. I’ve worked with Illustrator and Photoshop long enough to think of it as another tool, like a paint brush.

In creating these works I use a vocabulary of color and composition, improvising on a theme that comes to me at the moment of creation. I've found, through trial and error, that it's better not to start with a preconceived notion of the final image. In making monotypes the moment of revealing the finished piece as the paper runs through the press can be surprising and if you're lucky very fulfilling. I try to hold to that same spontaneity when working in the computer.