Dee Milligan

Email: ianmilligan@mac.com
Phone: (03) 9848 5739

"Hakea laurina II"
Hand-printed Colour Linocut

Dee's Commercial Art studies at Swinburne Technical College in the 1940s included printmaking - both etching and linocuts - under Alan Jordan. After completing her course she worked for several years as a commercial artist - under her maiden name of Deirdre East - before marrying and raising four beautiful and talented daughters. She maintained her interest in printmaking during this period, making Christmas and birthday cards, etc, and also worked in watercolour and oil. Her art work at this time was all in a voluntary capacity, and included teaching art and craft to Grades 4, 5 and 6 at Laburnum Primary School, where she also helped in the Library.

Night classes and summer schools kept up Dee's interest and development in art, and she studied screen printing, sculpture, ceramics, silver smithing, copper and enamel work. As a mature age student she completed Secondary School Year 12, a Library Technician course, and a Bachelor of Arts at Melbourne University, majoring in Fine Art and History. She worked as a Library Technician at Doncaster High School for many years, and in her spare time supervised and made costumes for many stage productions, both at the school and for local youth theatre.

Retirement in 1995, after 20 years of library work, marked a major change in Dee's life style. She returned to her early love of printmaking, retraining under Aileen Brown, and adding a studio to the family home in Doncaster - which at 32 squares is still far too small - and installed a hand printing press. It was at this time that she shortened her name to Dee Milligan, having put up with too many years of "Deirdre" being misspelled and mispronounced.

Dee's linocuts are all hand cut and hand printed in small editions, both black & white and colour, using either multi-block or reduction techniques. Although she has worked in wood, Dee finds lino easier. She mainly uses the reduction method, in which one piece of 'battleship' lino is cut back after each colour print run, but she will sometimes use two or even three blocks, each progressively reducing as appropriate.

Choosing the colours and planning the colour progression - lights to darks - is very important. Once Dee is satisfied with the design, it is traced and reversed, and the tracing is transferred by carbon to the lino, then drawn over in indelible ink so it won't wash off. The first cutting of the lino is to remove all the bits that will print white, then Dee starts to test-print with the lightest colour of her design, progressively cutting further and printing darker colours one after the other, until the final black or darkest colour. Seven colours are used on average. On a good day of cutting and printing Dee can progress her edition through two colours. The trickiest part of the entire operation is the registration of the paper for each successive printing, and she uses a hand-made 'jig' to position the block and paper in their correct relationship.

A thick paper, 250/300gsm, is used for printing, and Dee has to decide the number of her edition before starting. She originally used editions of 20, but now limits her editions to 10. A variety of techniques is used - a Japanese barren pressure pad; adding more or less colour to the block to adjust textures; or different press pressures to control the evenness of the ink. Varied results can also be achieved with larger or smaller rollers, graduated shades of printing ink, or by using multiple colours in one pass. While printmaking is now her major art interest, Dee still paints, using oil, acrylic, and water-soluble pastel. For the past 20 years she has been meeting once a month with the same group of friends for life drawing.

"Banksia integrifolia"
Hand-printed Colour Linocut