Alison Rector Silkscreens

Alison Rector Silkscreens Biography

Alison Rector is a representational painter and silkscreen printmaker, best known for her luminous oil paintings of interiors. Her paintings often depict light falling across objects or filtering through windows and doors to create a sense of atmosphere and allure. Rector holds a BA in Art from Brown University. She has been featured in Art New England, The Gettysburg Review, Maine Home + Design, and Carl Little’s book More Paintings of Maine. Her work has been featured in numerous exhibitions, including several biennials at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, and the 2003 biennial at the Portland Museum of Art. Rector maintains studios in Monroe and Portland, Maine.

Silkscreen (also called serigraph or screenprint) is a process where ink is forced through a printing screen onto a paper or fabric surface. A printing screen consists of a fine mesh fabric that is tightly stretched and attached to a metal or wooden frame. Traditionally these screens were made of silk, but today they are most often made from synthetic materials. To create a print, a stencil is adhered to a printing screen with a sheet of paper placed under the screen. The ink is then forced through the mesh screen with a squeegee pushing through the areas of the screen that are not blocked by the stencil, thus forming the image. For compositions of more than one color, the printmaker must repeat the process using a different stencil for each color while maintaining perfect registration.

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