About Fine Art Paintings as Giclée Prints

Giclée is a French term meaning “spray of ink”. This French term is used to describe the printing process that allows an artist to create a museum quality print using digital computer technology and a special high quality “Iris” printer.

To create a giclée print, an artist uses an archival high-quality paper or canvas. It is individually mounted on the Iris drum and fine spray jets blow millions of droplets per second on the paper to create a dynamic piece of art with a spectacular range of color. This ground breaking printing technique and digital technology allow the artist to have control of three million possible colors, billions of possibilities and hundreds of chromatic changes. With precise controls over color, hue, value and density, these prints achieve broader horizons and allow a more diverse array of style. The giclée printing process, unlike traditional methods of printing, does not use screens but instead is a direct ink to paper transfer, so the degree of resolution is much higher than lithographs, serigraphs and silk screens. While many artists use traditional media such as oils, watercolors and acrylics, artists seeking a higher degree of print quality have chosen giclée as the primary medium.

The giclée can become a creative process and a medium unto itself. Artists using the giclée process can use this technology to supplement and enhance traditional painting. The giclée market has rapidly expanded at a rate of sixty percent per year, because of the incredible quality of these art works. At the 1999 Art Expo in New York, 25% of the artworks on display were giclée prints. Examples of these beautiful works are exhibited at the nation’s most respected museums such as the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Isabella Stuart Gardiner Museum. Prominent artists such as Andrew Wyeth, David Hockney, Frank Stella and Joel Meyerowitz have been making giclée prints for years.

Working with prints has allowed Jeffrey Fallon to share superb editions from his water colors, acrylics and oils as well as his digital images at an affordable price without sacrificing the quality he demands.

See samples of giclée prints in the gallery...