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    Jillian Ross

    Master Printer · Printmaker · Publisher · Educator · Collaborator

    Jillian Ross has spent more than two decades learning what can happen when an artist’s idea meets the knowledge of a skilled printer. Her practice lives between craft and experimentation — ink, paper, pressure, chemistry, repetition and countless small decisions made collaboratively at the press. After nearly two decades working in South Africa, Jillian returned to Saskatoon and established Jillian Ross Print, carrying an international practice home while continuing the relationships that shaped it.

    Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, CanadaSaskatoon, Saskatchewan20+ years in printmakingCollaborative master printerPrint publisher
    Jillian Ross

    Knowledge & practice

    What Jillian carries

    1. 01

      Collaborative Printmaking

      The printer is not simply a technician executing someone else’s idea. Collaborative printmaking brings the artist’s visual language together with the printer’s understanding of materials, processes and possibility. Jillian’s practice has been built around that exchange for more than two decades.

    2. 02

      Intaglio & Print Processes

      Developing an image through plates, ink, paper, pressure and repeated testing. Jillian’s practice spans numerous printmaking methods and the technical problem-solving required to translate an idea into a reproducible physical image.

    3. 03

      Ink, Colour & Material Knowledge

      Much of a printer’s knowledge is difficult to separate from experience: how an ink behaves, how colours interact, what pressure a plate needs, how a particular paper responds and when a result that looks wrong is actually pointing toward something useful.

    4. 04

      Experimentation & Technical Problem Solving

      Complex creative work rarely arrives with instructions. Jillian’s practice is built around developing processes for ideas that may not have an obvious technical solution — testing, adapting and learning until the method and the image begin working together.

    5. 05

      Studio Practice & Knowledge Sharing

      A print studio is also a place where knowledge moves between people. Through collaborative projects, mentorship, workshops, talks and open-studio environments, Jillian has spent much of her career learning from other printers while passing practical knowledge forward to artists, printers and emerging practitioners.

    “I would just say, ‘Yes, sure, we can do that.’ And then I would figure out how to do it.”

    — Jillian Ross

    About Jillian

    The work gets better when knowledge is shared.

    Printmaking can appear to end with an image on paper. Jillian’s practice reveals everything that happens before it. A plate is developed. Ink is mixed. Pressure changes. Paper behaves differently than expected. An artist sees something new. The printer responds. An experiment fails, teaches something, and becomes the beginning of another attempt. For Jillian, mastery doesn’t mean removing uncertainty from the process. Her career has repeatedly involved saying yes to ambitious ideas and then discovering how to make them possible. She has described that willingness to experiment — saying, in effect, we can do that, and then figuring out how — as fundamental to her career. The knowledge lives not only in the finished print, but in the hands, conversations, experiments and relationships that produced it.

    Jillian Ross is a collaborative master printer based in Saskatoon. She graduated with distinction from the University of Saskatchewan with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2002 before moving to South Africa in 2003. There she ran David Krut Workshop in Johannesburg until 2020, collaborating with more than 100 South African and international artists.