Nocturnal Images is a color viscosity intaglio from 1967 by American printmaker Dick Swift. It is pencil signed, titled, and editioned Artists Proof XX/XX. It was printed by the artist on ivory wove paper and the platemark measures 10-7/8 x 7-7/8 inches. This particular impression is from the estate of the artist and is inscribed in pencil “mine” at the lower center sheet edge.
In Proof: The Rise of Printmaking in Southern California, Jennifer Anderson describes Swift’s processes: “Swift combined representational and abstract images and had a measured control of the soft-ground process. He pressed textured materials into the waxy soft ground and then etching the resulting textures into a metal plate, building a deeply dimensional surface that easily adapted to both intaglio and relief printing. He mastered viscosity printing, a technique created by Hayter that relied on rolling ink with different degrees of tackiness onto a plate with the softer ink pushing into lower areas and stiffer ink remaining on the higher raised areas. This resulted in a luminous but dense layering of colors in a print.”
Dick Swift (born Richard H. Swift, Jr.), printmaker, educator, and illustrator, was born in Long Beach, California on January 29, 1918. His studies began in 1938 at the Chouinard Art Institute where he was enrolled for three years. In 1943, Swift moved to New York to study for a year at the Art Students’ League where his principal teachers were Reginald Marsh, Will Barnet, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and Morris Kantor. In 1946, he studied under Rico Lebrun at the Jepson Art Institute in Los Angeles. Swift returned to his art training in 1954, studying for two years at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles where his influential teachers were Ernest Freed and Guy Maccoy. He continued his studies at the Pasadena City College before entering Los Angeles State College where he earned his B.A. degree in 1957. Swift studied under Paul Darrow and Roger Kunz at Claremont Graduate University in Los Angeles and earned his M.F.A. in 1958. He also studied printmaking with Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17 in Paris between 1964 and 1965.
Swift began his teaching career in 1946 at Occidental College. He joined the faculty at the California State University at Long Beach in 1958 and developed the highly regarded printmaking program and studios. He was a member of and exhibited with the American Color Print Society and the Los Angeles Print Society, and served as its president in 1968 and 1969. He exhibited extensively throughout the United States, Japan, and Europe receiving more than forty awards.
Dick Swift’s work is represented in the collections the Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio; the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Tennessee; the Philadelphia Art Museum, Pennsylvania; the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., and the Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts.
