Artist's proofs and editions

I make very few of any picture – whether it’s a person, a room, or a house from the street.

First, a word about originals

A lot of my work is drawn on an iPad. So in many cases there is no original – no single object I made with my hands that everything else is a copy of.

That’s a picture being made – the mantelpiece in Hunter Davies’s study, drawn on the iPad with an Apple Pencil. When it’s finished there’ll be no object to hang. There’ll be a file, and then prints made from it. The first print off the press is no more original than the second. They’re identical until the moment I put a pencil to the margin and write on one of them.

That’s what the signature does. It doesn’t certify that a print is the original. It makes it a particular one: this is a proof, or this is number nine of twenty-five. The writing is the thing that separates one sheet from another.

I think people sometimes assume that because there’s no canvas somewhere, the prints are all just copies. It’s closer to the truth to say the print is the work, and the inscription tells you which print it is.

Proofs

If you commissioned the work, the print is yours: signed, dedicated, and not marked as a proof. I keep one artist’s proof for my own records.

If I came to you – because I wanted to draw you, or your house, or the room you work in, and you said yes – then there’s no commission fee, and there are two proofs. I keep one. The other is signed, dedicated, and yours to buy if you’d like it. If you’d rather not, it may eventually go to someone else.

Editions

Occasionally a picture goes on to have a life beyond those proofs. I may decide to print a small numbered edition, or to make it available unnumbered, to order.

Artist’s proofs sit outside any edition. They’re made first, they carry my working marks, and they aren’t counted in the numbering. So a proof stays a proof whatever follows.

But it does mean a proof isn’t always the only print of a picture that exists, and I’d rather say so than let anyone assume otherwise. If you own a proof and I’m considering an edition of that picture, I’ll tell you before I do it.

How they’re made

Prints are made on Hahnemuhle German Etching paper by a specialist in Hoxton, east London.