10 Contemporary Monoprint & Monotype Artists Every Art Teacher Should Know

Looking for contemporary monoprint artists to inspire your students? From expressive portraiture and atmospheric landscapes to abstraction, identity and storytelling, contemporary artists are using monotype and monoprinting in remarkably different ways.

For secondary art teachers, these artists offer much more than examples to add to a sketchbook. Their work can introduce students to expressive line, tone, texture, layering, repetition, working in series and combining printmaking with other media.

We’ve selected 10 contemporary artists who can provide exciting starting points for GCSE Art, A Level Art and further education printmaking projects, along with questions that encourage students to investigate the ideas behind the work rather than simply copying an artist’s style.

Monoprint or Monotype – What’s the Difference?

The terms are often used interchangeably, particularly in education, but there is a technical difference.

A monotype is created from a smooth, unaltered plate, producing a unique image. A monoprint includes an element that can be repeated, while other aspects of the image change from one impression to another.

Throughout our resources, we use monoprinting as the broader classroom term for creating unique, one-off prints.

1. Tracey Emin – Expressive Line, Memory & Identity

Great for: Portraiture · Figure drawing · Identity · Memory · Expressive line · Autobiographical art

Students who believe a successful drawing needs to be highly polished may find Tracey Emin’s monoprints surprising.

Her Family Suite (1994) comprises a series of small monoprints exploring intensely personal memories of childhood and family life. The National Galleries of Scotland describes the works as having a dark, nervous line with something of the directness of children’s drawings. 

Emin’s approach captures not only the intended line but changes in pressure and incidental marks. There is little opportunity to continually rub out, refine and perfect the image.

That makes her an interesting reference for students who have become overly concerned with producing the ‘perfect’ drawing.

Why show students?

Emin demonstrates how the character of a line can communicate just as much as its accuracy.

Her work can support projects exploring identity, family, memory, relationships and portraiture while challenging the assumption that expressive drawing is somehow less accomplished than highly rendered realism.

Ask students: What can the quality of a line tell us about an image before we even consider what it depicts?

2. John Virtue – Landscape, Architecture & Atmosphere

Great for: Landscape · Architecture · Local environment · Tone · Mark-making · Working in series

John Virtue’s dramatic black-and-white monotypes demonstrate how radically an artist can reinterpret the same subject.

Between 2006 and 2007, Virtue created hundreds of monotypes exploring London and Venice. Instead of continually searching for new subject matter, he returned to familiar views and landmarks.

Buildings emerge from dense blacks. Skylines disappear into atmospheric marks. Recognisable landmarks become almost abstract.

Why show students?

Virtue is particularly useful for projects exploring landscape, cityscapes, architecture, weather, place and the local environment.

A school building, local high street, industrial estate or view from a classroom window can become a subject for repeated investigation. Students can keep the location constant while changing mark-making, contrast, viewpoint, scale or atmosphere.

Ask students: How many different interpretations of the same place could you create without changing the subject?

3. Ragnar Kjartansson – Repetition, Variation & Ghost Printing

Great for: Repetition · Working in series · Ghost printing · Variation · Humour · Narrative

Does every new artwork need a completely new idea?

Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson suggests otherwise.

Repetition runs throughout his practice, and his monotypes explore what happens when an image or action is revisited. His Running Scared I–IV (2022) series is particularly useful because ghost printing allows residual ink and imagery to connect one impression with another.

Each print is unique, yet the images belong together.

Image reference: Ragnar Kjartansson, Running Scared I–III, 2022. Unique monotypes. BORCH Editions.

Why show students?

Kjartansson challenges the idea that development means continually abandoning one idea and starting another.

Sometimes the more interesting question is simply:


What happens if I keep going?

Students can repeat one motif while altering scale, positioning, colour, pressure, orientation or layering.

Ask students: At what point does repetition begin to change the meaning of an image?

4. Nicole Eisenman – Portraiture & Working in Series

Great for: Portraiture · People · Character · Contemporary life · Working in series

Nicole Eisenman works across painting, drawing, sculpture and printmaking, frequently using figurative imagery to explore people and contemporary life.

Her Josh monotypes from 2012 are particularly useful because Eisenman repeatedly returns to the same sitter.

Instead of trying to create one definitive portrait, the series becomes an investigation.

Expression changes. Marks change. Composition changes.

The person remains.

Image reference: Nicole Eisenman, selected works from the Josh series, 2012. Monotype, series of nine. Ten Grand Press.

Why show students?

Eisenman is an excellent reference for portrait projects.

Instead of spending several lessons attempting to produce one perfect portrait, what might students discover by making several interpretations of the same person?

Cropping, expression, line, colour, tone and composition can all change while the subject remains constant.

Ask students: Does a portrait need to look exactly like someone to tell us something about them?

5. Peter Doig – Landscape, Memory & Place

Great for: Landscape · Memory · Journeys · Place · Atmosphere · Colour

Peter Doig is primarily known as a painter, but his monotypes demonstrate how ideas can move between painting and printmaking.

His Zermatt Monotypes from 2021 repeatedly explore Alpine imagery through mountains, skiers and figures. The series contains recurring motifs, but each is a unique monotype.

They aren’t straightforward records of a location. Like Doig’s paintings, they can feel somewhere between an observed place and a remembered one.

Image reference: Peter Doig, Untitled, Zermatt #9, 2021. Monotype. Two Palms.

Why show students?

Doig is a strong contemporary reference for projects exploring landscape, journeys, childhood places, holidays, memory and local environments.

His work can prompt students to consider the difference between recording a place and remembering one.

Ask students: How might a place change when you work from memory rather than directly from a photograph?

6. Marlene Dumas – Portraiture, Identity & Emotion

Great for: Faces · Figure · Identity · Emotion · Tone · Simplification

How much visual information do we actually need before we recognise a face?

Marlene Dumas is renowned for psychologically charged images of faces and the human body. Her Ecco Pier Paolo Pasolini works from 1988 include large-scale monotypes. The Rijksmuseum specifically catalogues the works as monotype.

For students accustomed to carefully rendering every feature, Dumas provides a radically different model of portraiture.

A face can distort. Areas can disappear. Marks can bleed. A likeness can be suggested rather than painstakingly described.

Why show students?

Dumas can help students rethink portraiture as an investigation of identity, emotion and presence rather than simply technical accuracy.

Ask students: How much information can you remove from a portrait before it stops feeling like a person?

7. Elizabeth Peyton – Portraiture, Photography & Popular Culture

Great for: Portraiture · Photography · Popular culture · Music · Colour · Source imagery

Elizabeth Peyton creates intimate portraits of friends, musicians, artists, historical figures and cultural icons.

Photography and existing imagery frequently provide starting points for her work, but the resulting image isn’t simply a reproduction of the source.

Her monotypes transform imagery through colour, mark-making, composition and the physical qualities of print.

Lichtenstein, Flowers, Parsifal (2011) is particularly interesting because it brings together references to Roy Lichtenstein, Wagner’s Parsifal and the still-life tradition.

Why show students?

Peyton is particularly useful for projects involving portraiture, celebrity, music, fandom, photography and popular culture.

She also raises an important question about source imagery. Students don’t necessarily need to work from one photograph; several references can be cropped, simplified, combined or reinterpreted.

Ask students: How can an artist transform a photograph rather than simply copy it.

8. Cecily Brown – Between Figuration & Abstraction

Great for: Abstraction · Figure · Gesture · Movement · Expressive mark-making

At first glance, Cecily Brown’s work can appear abstract.

Look for longer and fragments of bodies and recognisable forms begin to emerge.

Brown is primarily known as a painter but has also explored monotype extensively. Her prints retain much of the gestural energy associated with her paintings.

This makes her particularly useful for students who habitually begin every drawing by carefully outlining the subject.

What if the marks come first and the image emerges from them?

Why show students?

Brown provides an excellent bridge between figurative and abstract art.

Students working from figures, sport, dance, crowds or movement could progressively simplify their source imagery and investigate when recognisable forms begin to dissolve into marks.

Ask students: Where does an image stop being figurative and become abstract – and does it need to be one or the other?

9. Kiki Smith – Combining Printmaking Processes

Great for: Human body · Nature · Animals · Mixed media · Unusual surfaces

Kiki Smith demonstrates that contemporary artists don’t necessarily treat printmaking processes as separate boxes.

Her wider practice investigates the human body, animals, nature, mortality and vulnerability through drawing, sculpture and numerous forms of printmaking.

Untitled (Fluttering Eyes) (1990) combines screenprint and monotype across eight sheets of handmade Nepalese paper.

The monotype isn’t being used because Smith has decided she is ‘doing a monoprinting project’.

It is simply one of the processes the artwork needs.

Image reference: Kiki Smith, Untitled (Fluttering Eyes), 1990. Screenprint and monotype on eight sheets of handmade Nepalese paper. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Why show students?

Smith is particularly valuable once students have begun experimenting with several processes.

Instead of asking “Which technique am I using?”, encourage them to ask:

“Which process does this artwork need?”

Print can be combined with drawing, collage, screen printing, relief printing and unusual papers rather than existing as an isolated exercise.

Ask students: What could one process contribute to an artwork that another process can’t?

10. Chitra Ganesh – Storytelling, Identity & Mixed Media

Great for: Narrative · Mythology · Identity · Comics · Symbolism · Mixed media

Chitra Ganesh offers perhaps the clearest demonstration on this list of just how contemporary printmaking can feel.

Her richly layered imagery draws on mythology, South Asian visual culture, comics, feminism and science fiction.

Rather than keeping those influences separate, Ganesh allows them to collide.

Her The Wolf Watcher’s Dream (2022) series begins with watercolour monotype, which Ganesh then develops through screenprint, embroidery and hand-painting.

Image reference: Chitra Ganesh, The Wolf Watcher’s Dream, 2022. Watercolour monotype with screenprint, embroidery and hand-painting. Durham Press.

Why show students?

Ganesh is an exciting reference for projects exploring storytelling, mythology, dreams, identity, culture, imagined worlds, comics and symbolism.

Her work demonstrates how students can bring together seemingly unrelated source material to develop their own visual language.

Ask students: Which images, stories and visual cultures have shaped the way you imagine the world?

Which Contemporary Monoprint Artist Should I Introduce?

Choosing an artist reference doesn’t have to begin with finding someone whose finished artwork looks like the outcome you want students to produce.

Start with the idea students are exploring.

Portraiture and identity: Tracey Emin, Nicole Eisenman, Marlene Dumas or Elizabeth Peyton
Landscape and place: John Virtue or Peter Doig
Abstraction and expressive mark-making: Cecily Brown
Repetition and working in series: Ragnar Kjartansson
Nature, the body and combining processes: Kiki Smith
Storytelling, culture and narrative: Chitra Ganesh

This shifts artist research away from:

“Make something in the style of…”

towards:

“What could this artist’s way of working help you discover?”

A student might investigate John Virtue’s commitment to repeatedly exploring one location without adopting his black-and-white aesthetic. They might explore the immediacy of Tracey Emin’s line without making autobiographical work. Or they could take inspiration from Chitra Ganesh’s layering of different visual sources while investigating an entirely different subject.

The artist becomes a starting point for investigation rather than a style to copy.

What Do Students Need for Monoprinting?

One of the advantages of monoprinting in schools and colleges is that students can investigate a surprisingly broad range of ideas with a relatively straightforward collection of monoprinting materials.

For classroom monoprinting, you’ll typically need printing inks, printing rollers, smooth monoprinting plates, printmaking papers and a selection of mark-making tools. Drawing and mixed-media materials are also useful when students want to develop their prints further.

For schools buying for a whole class, quantity matters. Having enough rollers, printing plates and affordable printmaking paper allows students to experiment freely rather than waiting for equipment or becoming overly precious about each print.

Contemporary Monoprinting in GCSE & A Level Art

The artists in this guide demonstrate that there isn’t one recognisable ‘monoprinting style’ for students to imitate.

Monoprinting can be intimate and autobiographical like Tracey Emin, atmospheric like John Virtue, repetitive like Ragnar Kjartansson, painterly like Cecily Brown or richly layered and narrative-driven like Chitra Ganesh.

It can resemble drawing, painting or collage, and sometimes several processes at once.

That’s precisely what makes contemporary monotype and monoprint artists so valuable as references for secondary Art & Design.

Rather than simply showing students what a monoprint should look like, these artists can help them ask different questions about portraiture, landscape, identity, memory, repetition, abstraction, storytelling and their own visual language.

Introduce the artist. Explore the ideas. Give students the materials to experiment.

Then let them discover where monoprinting can take their own work.

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