Marsha Cottrell uses laser printer to depict her art.
Brooklyn artist Cottrell uses a “large format Epson inkjet printer” as well as two HP Inc “electrostatic laser printers” for her art, reported Blou in Art Info, and her interest in laser printers comes from the “17 years she spent in magazine publishing”, which she remembered as sitting looking at a computer screen for hours on end.
She added: “I felt like the screen was this barrier and my inclination was to move into it. Since I couldn’t be in my studio, it was natural for me to consider how I might use the tools in my immediate environment.”
Explaining her art. Cottrell said: “Painting and drawing in the traditional sense are linked so directly with the body. Screens are flat and planar like a canvas or piece of paper, but the activity that takes place within or on them has very little immediate physicality. In a sense I’m trying to get this stuff—all the hardware and software—out of the way. I want to introduce a nervous system, a realm of human feeling or awareness into this rational environment.”
Cottrell uses toner to build “a wide range of greys on the surface of the paper”, and “because toner can’t be erased once it’s fixed to a surface”, the artist has a lot of thinking time in preparation of what to do next, noting that “in addition to making the object, I’m gaining some control over the pace at which time moves forward. Everything becomes about an intense concentration”.
The artist’s latest platinum prints are on show in New York City, and they were made by “hand coating a sheet of paper with a metal-infused light sensitive solution that is then exposed to sunlight with a negative”, which is similar to the basics of laser printing.