Andrew DeCaen
Drop Leaf, lithograph, screen print, 20" x 15" 2020
“I love the way color is always relational - behaving differently depending on its surroundings and layers.”
Andrew DeCaen is an artist living and working in Denton, Texas (USA). His approach to color is technical and relational and his approach to printmaking is methodical and traditional. Andrew’s contemplative, detailed and sensitive work is created primarily with lithography and screenprinting techniques, through which he transforms drawings and prints into sculptural forms. The majority of his current work focuses on several interrelated projects related to rituals surrounding food.
What historical precedents do you follow in the history of color printmaking?
I am drawn to many traditions in the history of color printmaking. Early color lithography often used color strategies that are not as efficient as CMYK but yield color harmonies that I find more engaging up close. For example, the prints of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec are known for strong graphic flats and line, but they also use layers of sprayed tone that create complex color results through optical mixing. Nineteenth century print artists often composed images that allow the white of the paper to breath in strategically limited locations. We often take the white paper for granted when looking at fine art prints, but some of my favorite prints limit the white of the paper so that it can speak very differently.
I am attracted to the layering of disparate imagery that we might owe to modern prints or modernism in general. I also reference color from printed ephemera and product packaging in my sculptural prints. Lately, I have been interested in more limited color palettes and particularly to the color blue both for its emotional tones and for reference to blue prints. Blue line architectural drawings have an aesthetic that speaks to the idea of analytical and theoretical planning. I am interested in how this color notion might be applied to images that explore our intentions, hopes, and schemes.
Precocious Setting, lithograph, 11" x 15", 2016
Burn Handle, sculptural print (lithograhpy, screen print, laser cut), 15" x 8" x 3", 2019
“I enjoy that the print process offers specific moments where I might change my mind or commit to an initial instinct about a color.”
How does the printmaking process itself relate to how you work with color?
I enjoy the way print processes slow me down and allow me to think things through at a contemplative pace. Stone lithography is particularly time and labor consuming. I enjoy the way graining a stone sets a physically meditative phase before the drawing. As I am watching the levigator disc spin, everything else in my mind seems to dissolve and I focus on what I might draw.
I think about an image in layers – sometimes layers of color that enhance a single image, and sometimes layers of distinct imagery that create tension and/or harmonies. If I am using the prior methodology, the process feels like drawing the same image again and again with subtle changes in the iterations. For me, that is an interesting way of knowing the subject.
I tend to approach color progressively by working with one or two planned colors and very loose ideas of how later colors will proceed so that the long process of making a color print can delay some of those specific creative decisions. I enjoy that the print process offers specific moments where I might change my mind or commit to an initial instinct about a color. For example, my first two colors may be nearly analogous, then I follow-up with transparent neutralized hues that are somewhat complementary so that they can dull the prior colors where they overlap and create subtle tension where they sit adjacent. The dots of tonal value create optical mixing with strongly diverse range with very few layers.
“We often take the white paper for granted when looking at fine art prints, but some of my favorite prints limit the white of the paper so that it can speak very differently.”
What is your educational lineage with color?
My first formal introduction to color was a college design course. I ate up that first taste of color theory, but my first attempts at applying theory were obvious and clumsy. Many of my first mentors were non-objective color-focused artist. I think it was Juergen Strunck who explained that many very intense colors in one composition may have a difficult time harmonizing without some neutralized hues or chromatic grays accompanying them.
There are so many exceptions to color rules. I love the way color is always relational - behaving differently depending on its surroundings and layers. I took my first printmaking and painting classes simultaneously. I loved the speed and spontaneity of applying color as a painter, but I also loved how the very slow process of printmaking forced me to approach color from a more systematic way of working. In the end printmaking won for me, but both shaped my intuition.
Place, lithograph, 15" x 20", 2019