Event
Artist Talk & Demo: Dale Bradley’s Direct Transfer Intaglio
Kindly click “Register Now” to RSVP for this free event
Thursday, July 24, 2025, 6 PM
Location: Center for Contemporary Printmaking
Limited Space – Registration Required
Join us to learn more about artist Dale Bradley’s innovative Direct Transfer Intaglio technique!
Imagine…
- being able to capture all the subtle tones and textures of painted brush marks within the tradition of etching.
- comparing your newly printed image with your painting and discovering that it looks nearly identical, holds all the tones and textures, and is not reversed!
- creating this intaglio plate for editioning within one hour.
With Dale Bradley’s innovative Direct Transfer Intaglio technique, the artist simply paints, transfers the painting by embossing it into an acrylic plate, and prints.
In this exclusive lecture and demonstration, Bradley will share this revolutionary process which will allow printmakers and painters the opportunity to create a painterly print with ease.
Overview of Talk:
Inspired by 19th-century artist/printmaker, Herbert von Herkomer, Bradley began experimenting years ago in an attempt to reproduce his unique printing process. Herkomer created an intaglio process by painting with graphite paint onto an electrically conductive surface. By electroplating a deposit of copper onto this graphite paint, he was able to create a printing plate which transferred all of the texture of the original painting onto it. When printed, the resulting print looked very much like a black and white monoprint capturing the artist’s hand and retaining all of the subtle details and textures, from the lightest gray tones to rich blacks. Bradley found the process to be extremely difficult; furthermore, it requires a large electro-plating system which is expensive and difficult to use, making it nearly impossible to reproduce today.
By utilizing the unique qualities of plastic polymers and resins, Bradley has discovered how to exploit 21st century technology to mimic Herkomer’s process. Bradley’s new intaglio process creates the plate by casting or thermally embossing the painting onto plastic. Over the past two years, Bradley has been experimenting exclusively with this Direct Transfer Intaglio process. Bradley was inspired by the possibilities of painting onto a substrate, and then embossing that substrate into an acrylic plate. This acrylic printing plate is now intaglio, which can be inked, wiped, and printed as a traditional etching. Bradley has also developed a textured painting medium which has unique qualities for this Direct Transfer Intaglio.
Dale Bradley is an interdisciplinary artist working in many mediums, including painting, stainless steel sculpture, and printmaking. He is an experimenter and fabricator of some of the world’s largest presses for artists. He is currenting conducting workshops on a new painterly intaglio technique, Direct Transfer Intaglio. Bradley finds himself traveling and teaching workshops on unique printmaking processes and demonstrating the benefits of his flat-bed presses.
He resides in North Adams, Massachusetts. His work can be found on Artsy, Artnet and on Instagram: @apertofineart and @bradleyprintmaking
