Last month, New York-based artist Ryan McGinness worked in collaboration with Brooklyn printer Coeur Noir to produce 12 limited edition sets of his series “Mother and Child.” Each edition includes twelve 11-by-8.5-inch letterpress prints, depicting the artist’s wife and daughters as black and white minimalist forms. The proceeds from the editions will go to benefit Free Arts NYC, a nonprofit dedicated to providing art exposure and mentorship to underprivileged youth.
Starting with life drawings before the birth of his children, McGinness transformed photographs into sketches of streamlined shapes, designed for optimal readability in the final prints. In his large-scale prints for the series, McGinness chose vibrant translucent inks and overlapped multiple designs over each other, heightening the sense of complexity and abstraction in his work; his prints with Coeur Noir return to the pure, stylized forms he began with.
Ryan McGinness, Konstantin Grab.
The artist emphasized how much he enjoyed working with Coeur Noir ten years ago, citing the print house as his main reason for undertaking the project. The prints are available for purchase online at Coeur Noir’s website.
