Ed Baynard

Ed Baynard’s highly stylised work is reminiscent of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japanese woodblocks. His prints are decorative and his subject matter is largely still-lifes, mainly flowers and plants. He depicts these with a minimum of modeling and shading, his style embracing the flatness of the paper rather than aspiring to create an illusion of objects in space.

Monotype (B-2) is one of eighty-one unique prints (including six diptychs) created by Baynard at the Tyler workshop in New York in 1980 (published in 1981). Kenneth Tyler first worked on the plates, blend-rolling and inking them to create a surface for Baynard to work with. Baynard then painted his images directly on a polished magnesium plates using lithographic inks mixed with solvents and varnishes. He reworked the plates after each impression was made to create each new unique print. Each of the works was printed on TGL handmade paper using a flatbed offset press. This work is signed and dated by Baynard in white pencil on the lower right edge.

Because the image is painted directly on the plate, and quickly worked, this monotype and the rest of its group are far more painterly than Baynard’s woodcuts or lithographs (see, for example, The Tulip Pitcher 1980, Tate P11995). The loosely applied background colour adds a textural quality to the work, while the high contrast between this dark ground and the delicate pink tinted petals reveals the influence of Japanese prints on Baynard’s work.

Further reading
Sean Rainbird (ed.), Print Matters: The Kenneth E. Tyler Gift, exhibition catalogue, Tate, 2004, reproduced p.31.
Ed Baynard: Woodblock Prints and Watercoloured Lithographs 1980, Tyler Graphics, Bedford, New York 1980.
Tyler Graphics Catalogue Raisonné, 1974–1985, Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis, 1987, pp.66–77.

Maria Bilske
April 2005