Donna Sharee

There’s a moment, just before I lift a print from the press, when I genuinely don’t know what I will find. I thrive on these moments of quiet discovery.
 
I have been making monotypes since 1995, when a trip to the annual printmaking sale at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Art Center inspired me to learn the form myself. As a graphic designer for tech magazines, I was eager to return to my passion for studio art, my college major, and for making something by hand. Drawn to modern abstraction, I experimented with a number of approaches over the years, eventually developing my distinctive use of stencils cut from textured papers, cardboard, and other sourced ephemera. Thirty years later, experimentation with these elements is at the heart of my practice.
 
Monotypes are one-of-a-kind prints, each one a singular object. I am building imagery through layers of ink placed on these stencils. Each new layer is like meeting the piece for the first time. The press does its part, and I do mine. It’s a tool I power with my own hands, and what emerges from that collaboration is never entirely predictable. Paper is the most sensitive medium: everything is visible, including the marks that weren’t planned. The surprise is, honestly, my favorite part.


 
Printmaking has shaped how I think about making art. It’s often a communal practice: artists sharing a press, a studio, a meal, a story. I’ve learned enormously from working alongside other printmakers, and that spirit of exchange has touched me thoroughly. My deepest hope is that the prints themselves carry something of that warmth – that they offer the viewer a moment of rest, of pleasure, or of seeing something slightly differently than before.