Paul Croft
Technical Expertise Stone and Plate Lithography, Photoplate Lithography, Waterless Lithography, Mokulito, Woodcut, Etching and Screenprinting Education Experience 30 years+ teaching printmaking at Foundation - BA - MA - PhD levels; Introductory and Master Classes on Lithography Print Collaboration 25 years+ print collaboration with professional artists
Contact
Wales
About
Paul Croft TMP RE
Born 1963, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Croft studied Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art, specialising in printmaking and later trained to become a Tamarind Master Printer of Lithography (TMP) at the world-renowned Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. In 2008 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers (RE) in London.
Croft is a professional artist, printmaker, lithographer, collaborating printer and educator, based in Aberystwyth, Wales. As Lecturer in Fine Art Printmaking at the School of Art, Aberystwyth University, he teaches printmaking to students at undergraduate, post graduate and PhD levels. His research interests focus upon the technical, social, cultural and historical aspects of printmaking – specifically those relating to traditional, conventional, contemporary and digital techniques of stone and plate lithography.
He has written two books on Stone Lithography (2001) and Plate Lithography (2003) published as part of the A&C Series of Printmaking Handbooks. He has also curated several exhibitions including Stone-Plate-Grease-Water: International Contemporary Lithography (2007-8) and Contemporary Chinese Printmaking: Prints by Artists from Hunan Province (2014-16)
Croft is also a founding member and co-director of Aberystwyth Printmakers, an independent group of printmakers, which has a print workshop providing facilities for etching, relief printing and lithography, located in Brogerddan, about three miles from Aberystwyth town centre.
As an artist, much of his own work comprises of drawing and printmaking, involving stone and plate lithography but increasingly also makes use of woodcut, monotype and stencil printing. Throughout his career this work has predominantly been concerned with the development of personal visual language, which has sought to synthesise motifs from a broad range of observations, still life and found objects, informed in large part by ongoing research into letter forms, characters, alphabets and more recently, by his efforts to learn Mandarin. He has exhibited his work widely throughout Ireland and the UK and internationally at galleries and museums in Japan, USA, Hong Kong, China, Australia and New Zealand.
Since qualifying as a Tamarind Master Printer in 1996, his role as a ‘collaborating printer’ has led to a long series of print collaborations with artists from across the UK and beyond. This has included working with notable Welsh artists Mary Lloyd Jones, Shani Rhys Davies, David Tress, Pete Williams, Ian Phillips, Stuart Evans and Becca artist - Peter Davies. He has also worked with London artists Marcelle Hanselaar, Wuon Gean Ho, Anne Desmet and Professor Jin Bao Ping from Shenzhen Fine Art Institute.
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