Printing With Paint, Light, Chemicals

“The Art of the Print,” at The White Gallery, is a smart show for the times. Owners Susan and Tino Galluzo have brought together three artists, all women as it happens, of very different styles and printmaking techniques to present 40 works that are almost all interesting, visually compelling and affordable. While most of us know a print when we see it, few understand the differences between drypoint and etching, monoprint and intaglio. Happily the Galuzzos provide a single-page crib sheet to carry from work to work, which is useful in appreciating the range of possibilities in printmaking and the difficulties. Frances Ashforth makes monotypes, a process in which images are painted directly on a metal plate and then transferred to paper in a press. Finished pieces resemble watercolor paintings, though no two prints are exactly alike. Her landscapes are made of horizontal bands of color — pale golds, grays and shades of blue — that call up land and water and cloud-filled sky. The prints are lovely and calming, even when the clouds seem to roil before your eyes. Sally Frank also produces monotypes, but they look edgy, detailed, clinical. In a good way. Most of her trees, for instance, are bare, revealing the armature that bears leaves, needles and fruit in season. “Crabapple II,” on the other hand, is a gorgeously, carefully rendered image of a fruit-laden branch in pale gray-green and black. Frank also etches, and her three “Beach Plum” pictures are my favorites. The plant’s famously quirky, gnarled branches spread over a background so gritty you can almost feel the sand and the sun. Nancy McTaegue-Stock creates her work with drypoint or solar etching. Drypoint, reminiscent of Durer and Rembrandt, leaves little curls called the burr when metal plates are cut, unlike engraving, which removes all the metal to leave a smooth cut line. Both “South Bristol Serenity,” a landscape in shades of green, and “Blue View,” two tall, leafy trees beside a road that disappears in the distance, seem velvety, of another time and place. Best is “Flora Free Fall,” a study in blue, white and splotches of yellow in which the artist has over painted her drypoint with watercolor as Miro so often did. The artist’s solar etchings, works that use light instead of chemicals to produce images on photosensitive plates, result in complicated single or diptych prints that resemble inkblots or linoleum block designs; or in geometric, kaleidoscopic patterns in emphatic color. “Floral Suite,” the same design produced in four different, vibrant colors look good together. “The Art of the Print” continues at The White Gallery, 342 Main St., Lake-ville, through July 10. Call 860 435-1029 or go to www.thewhitegalleryart.com.