Biography of Jack Carlton

Since childhood I’ve been on a continuous quest – the development of my own visual imagery. Now I’m doing a lot of aquatint etching. I draw out the idea first in pencil; quill steel pen and ink, and watercolor – figuring out as much as possible what I want the etching to look like. Often I take a drawing and transfer it into a monoprint with printer’s ink on printmaking paper.

Sometimes it’s hard to give up on a piece that seems not to be succeeding. So I change it and add to it. Sometimes I cut it up and rearrange it until it comes to a place where I can leave it alone and feel finished with it and more or less happy about it.

There is a process in drawing I almost feel like I’ve invented. The technique is frappage, French for stamp. Instead of using a pencil, I ink found rubber objects with oil-based printer’s ink and draw out the stamped composition on Arches watercolor paper.