Fall on the Prairie (from the Prairie Suite)

 

Russell Chatham

  1939 - 2019 (biography)

2007  

color lithograph printed from 38 plates 

16 x 19 7/8" image and paper size 

pencil initialed, in image, lower right 

artist's proof (one of 25, outside of regular edition) 

pencil dated and editioned 

 

heavy cream wove 

published 

artist 

18943 

SOLD

During a phone interview with a staff member of the Billings Gazette, Chatham explained his interest in lithography and his techniques: The process of lithography has been in place for 100 years and originally images were drawn on stone and printed on a flat press. In my case, I take the same plate and draw on it. I started it [making lithographs] many, many years ago, twenty-five or maybe more than that, because I was kind of interested in it. I didn't know if I was going to like it but I wanted to have something besides paintings that I could sell that multiple people could buy. I wanted to keep the price low so people could afford them. I know where I want to go and what it should look like. I can't really know how it will come out. I try as best as I can to control it and where it will go. But there is a definite chance for failure. You try not to let that happen, but all you can do is move it in the direction of where it should go and hope it gets there. There are other people making lithographs, but not on the power press. The way my lithographs differ is in the number of colors we use. I create something that's so far beyond what anyone else has attempted. My work is very saturated with color. A lot of people do lithographs by hand and they go eight colors. Sometimes we go to fifty colors.