Phyllis Plattner - Sun Palm
American, b.1940
Sun Palm, 1984
6 color lithograph, 30 x 40 inches
Printer's Proof from an edition of 30
Landfall Press
04.021

Alumni Gift

Plattner is most known for her realistic paintings and prints. She was born in 1940 and earned her BA from Bennington College and her MFA from Claremont Graduate School. She then went on to travel the world, spending extensive periods in San Cristobal, Chiapas; Mexico and also in the Tuscan countryside between Florence and Siena. Her experience living abroad can be seen through her work, as she often uses tropical landscape shapes and other multicultural representations. She now teaches and works in Bethesda, Maryland.

In 1984 Plattner created her first lithographs, a series made of six color prints. These were made in collaboration with Jack Lemon, master printer at Landfall Press in Chicago. They were each six colors, drawn in reverse on a combination of aluminum ball grain plates and litho stones, printed in the traditional lithography process. All of the prints were based loosely on previously completed paintings. “The great challenge in doing them was to imagine and then create the color separations from an existing image which is made up of complex, mixed colors. In doing this difficult task the comparison that came to mind was a musical one: drawing each color plate was like trying to single out a particular instrumental part from hearing a fully developed symphony. You have to unpeel from the blended sound the specific role of each contributing part.”