Non-Toxic Drypoint Printmaking with John Fitzsimmons

Saturday, April 25 and Sunday, April 26, 2026

Time: 9am-4pm, lunch break 12-1pm

Ages/Levels: 16+, All levels

Cost: $125 members, $135 non-members

This 2-day workshop will be an introduction to the clear plate drypoint process for making original prints. This technique is simple and non toxic and opens up many possibilities for artists of any level. The first day will cover an introduction to the technique with examples, demonstrate the full plate-and-print process, and then guide students as they create their own plates from their own source. The second day students will finalize their plates, produce finished prints, and take part in a group critique.

All materials will be provided. 

John Fitzsimmons was born in Central New York in 1953. John grew up on the edge of small-scale suburbia and spent his time in the fields and woods during the short summers and long and cold winters. “My focus was science, I loved chemistry and assumed I would be some sort of scientist”.

At an early age, Fitzsimmons started to progressively lose his hearing, which made school difficult. He took several years of lip reading and eventually was able to get hearing aids.

At 16 he moved with his family to Lockport NY, near Buffalo.  Around this time, he saw an exhibit of Charles Birchfield’s watercolors at the Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute.  “It seems that around the same time I saw the Birchfield show, I saw Frank Stella, Claus Oldenburg and Alexander Calder in Life Magazine and I think is when I decided to become an artist, it seemed like something I could do and an interesting life”.

He attended SUNY New Paltz and remembers two great teachers. “I learned a great deal about design from Dale Stein, I remember his lessons about color, contrast, scale, pattern, and texture all the time”.  His drawing teacher was Alexander Minewski, “who I listen to every time I draw”. He went onto the Art Academy of Cincinnati. “I loved Cincinnati, in the early 70’s the cultures were not yet homogenized, and I got a very solid education there”. 

Fitzsimmons is currently concentrating on paintings and prints of single figures and groups of figures. “I see the figure as raw material, that I use to search for the painting that is there somewhere”.   He often says that his work is about the “non-verbal idea” but this quote says this best: “My interest lies in what cannot be told, in what seems unspeakable.” — Nicolas Africano