Nick Satinover
Sprawl Song (2), lithography, 14” x18”, 2018
“...color is powerful in its ability to shift perception and create questions about how we perceive the world around us.”
Nick Satinover is an artist living and working in Murfreesboro, Tennessee (USA). His approach to color is responsive and his approach to printmaking is luddite. Nick’s contrasting, accumulative and collage work is created primarily with lithography and woodcut printmaking techniques and occasionally everything else.
Currently he is preparing works for delayed solo exhibitions at the Rural America Contemporary Art gallery in Mankato, MN and the Cube Gallery at Truman State University in Kirksville, MO. Nick is also working on a series of loop-based guitar compositions which will be made into an edition of lathe-cut vinyl records (with accompanying printed material).
Where do you reside between technical and intuitive in your work as an artist using color?
I like the phrasing of this question which pits technical and intuitive as opposites on a spectrum. I think of it just like that; a slider bar which moves back and forth between highly deliberate and highly responsive. I would assume that I have internalized a lot of technical information so I can work more intuitively, but I also work within print processes which govern how color is applied.
When mixing color I am often thinking about how to create as many relationships as possible. I don’t set out to use a particular color as much as I mix color on the ink slab until it has the right set of characteristics. This may be something like preparing two different colors that are respectively warm + cool, bright + dull, chromatic + achromatic, or overt + subtle. The pursuit is creating contrast in as many ways as possible, but the exact identity of each color in terms of hue (which I think is how most folks start with color) is less important. I feel like I’m constantly finding color and being charmed by it without yielding all control over the result.
Time is a Distance (7), lithography, 18”x14”, 2020
“I don’t set out to use a particular color as much as I mix color on the ink slab until it has the right set of characteristics.”
Isolationencyclopedia. Screenprinted folder which includes two cds of home recorded audio and zine of found patterns. 8” x 8” closed. 2020
“Since printing ink is used as a thin film, it requires you to think about the ground you are putting your next color on.”
What can printmaking ink achieve regarding color in your work that no other material can?
I work mostly in reductive printmaking processes, which requires layering each color on top of previously printed color until finished. Since printing ink is used as a thin film, it requires you to think about the ground you are putting your next color on. This can be either a novel feature of printing ink or a challenge, depending on your view. Personally, I embrace the way overprinting shifts and influences my newly mixed color. It is similar to how the drawing on a plate looks one way, only to have it mirrored when printed. I am no longer surprised by it and at this point I rely on it.
Because of the thin application, printing ink allows for an accumulation of layered color films which is unique and beautiful. You get the integrity of each layer, which can be as bold as a billboard or as subtle as a whisper. Regardless, you can still piece out the moves and understand the relationship between drawn/made mark and its printed color. I am endlessly impressed by how printmaking can offer so many opportunities for color.
Do you have an experience where viewing color altered your perception or understanding in a meaningful way?
As an undergraduate student at Wright State University, our art program required that everyone take multiple courses in painting. The courses were taught on the top floor of the building and the studio featured angled, triangular-shaped skylights. We were instructed in perceptual painting from observation. We were asked to observe, mix, paint and continually rework the canvas. If the sky became cloudy, the light changed and you’d be instructed to review your work and scrape the paint off and make it correct for that situation. It was incredibly frustrating, but we were learning to question our eyes and translate the world into color. I wasn’t sure what the point was at the time, but I did start to realize how contextual color is and began viewing the world in color mixtures; I ran through them in my head during the day. I started looking into dark corners in my apartment and trying to decide if a black was more orange or more blue. I would stare at reflective objects and try to figure out how to mix something that looked like that particular silver. I was constantly going through the mixtures in a palette in my mind.
I don’t recall ever being given the name for what we were up to in those classes. I didn’t realize we were learning color theory and gaining understanding of how our senses betray us. In graduate school I took a proper color theory course and got the technical names for the things I knew from experience. That act of naming was a second revelation and has further reinforced a belief that color is powerful in its ability to shift perception and create questions about how we perceive the world around us.
Middle Forecast (13). Woodcut and lithography, 20”x20”, 2018