What's the quickest and easiest way to produce an image? Who cares?
A screen can generate, duplicate and distribute one in amoment. A printer can produce hundreds of identical copies while nobody gets ink underneath a fingernail, cuts a piece of lino in the wrong direction or lifts a sheet of paper from a plate without knowing whether the experiment has worked.
Printmaking is slower than that.
It requires pressure, patience and a willingness to relinquish a little control. The image conceived by an artist is changed by the block, plate, ink, paper and press. Even work produced as part of an edition carries the evidence of a physical process.
On 19 and 20 September, York Printmakers will bring those processes - and the artists who practise them - to York Cemetery for the group’s Annual Print Fair.
Across the Chapel and Harriet Room, visitors will find original handmade work encompassing linocuts, collagraphs, monoprints and wood engravings. Admission is free, and the artists will be present throughout the weekend to discuss what they make and how they make it.
And conversation is an important part of the fair.
We usually encounter a finished artwork after the uncertainty and physical labour have disappeared. The print hangs neatly framed, with little indication of the carving, layering, wiping, rolling, registration and repeated trial that brought it into being.
Meeting its maker allows that hidden history to reappear.
A linocut begins with material being removed: the artist carving away the areas that will not receive ink and leaving behind the surface that will form the image. A collagraph may be assembled from textured materials fixed to a plate. A monoprint embraces singularity and experimentation, while the exacting marks of a wood engraving can produce astonishing detail on a remarkably small scale.
Each process has its own language and limitations. Artists are drawn to them through different routes, and York Printmakers reflects that variety.
The group is a a diverse community united by a passion for original handmade prints. Its membership ranges from people with formal art-school backgrounds to professional artists who exhibit widely, each bringing an individual approach to the press.
For visitors, the fair offers an accessible way into that community.
There is no expectation that anyone has to arrive knowing the difference between relief and intaglio printing. Questions are welcome. Information about forthcoming workshops will also be available for those who would like to move from looking at prints to making their own.
And, of course, work can be bought directly from the artists.
At a time when our walls - and our screens - are flooded with endlessly reproduced images, there is particular pleasure in taking home something made slowly and deliberately. Buying directly also means knowing whose hands produced it and ensuring that the money reaches the person who did the work.
The venue provides another distinctive layer. York Cemetery is already a place of extraordinary architectural, natural and social history. For one September weekend, its Chapel and Harriet Room will become a meeting place for contemporary artists, curious visitors and anyone prepared to be diverted by ink on paper.
No manifesto is required. You might just find something beautiful.
But spend a little time talking to the printmakers and you may also leave understanding why, in an age of effortless reproduction, artists remain fascinated by the moment when paper is peeled away and the image is revealed.
Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 September 2026
10am–5pm
The Chapel and Harriet Room, York Cemetery, YO10 5AJ
Admission is free
Find out more at York Printmakers or follow @yorkprintmakers on Instagram.
