Monica Egeli

Monica Egeli (1971) was born in Egersund, and works and works at Nesodden. She has extensive experience in arts and crafts, and has worked for several years as an illustrator alongside being a performing artist. She is a qualified art and craft teacher, has further education in illustration and a cand mag degree in science.

This is what the artist says about his work:

"I mostly work with photographs in my pictures. The most important thing for me is to be able to convey a mood. I am concerned with conveying something intangible between what you see and what you don't see. A kind of invisible layer in a way. Silence and calmness are important keywords in my pictures.I want to create a calmness both for me as an artist and for the viewer.

The starting point is photographs that I take myself. I process these in photoshop, and print them on a transparent with raster (dots). This transparency becomes my "negative" when I develop the image. Then I prepare the copper plate by laminating on a photosensitive film, a so-called photopolymer film. I then place the transparency on top of the copper plate with film on it. Then I illuminate and develop in a darkroom as with normal photo film.

Photopolymer is a gravure printing method. This means that there will be indentations in the copper plate. It is in these depressions that emit color in the printing process.

After curing with light and heat, the plate is ready to be printed with. I use a standard gravure printing method where you first apply ink and then tap off the excess ink. The color will settle in pits in the film. When I then place the paper on top of the plate and use a press with high pressure, the color in all the recesses will be deposited on the sheet. I always work with several plates on one and the same image. Each plate gets its own color. You print all the plates on the same sheet."