Photo Credit: Bre Pettis

Paul Rickards

Paul Rickards writes Python and speaks fluent vintage pen plotter. I honestly can't remember how we first met, but Paul is one of those people who keeps historical computers and plotters alive — and builds the infrastructure so others can too. He owns more than twenty of the machines — HPs and Rolands from the 1980s, many of which he repaired or restored himself — and picks the right one for each drawing the way a printmaker picks a press. His programs generate the compositions; the plotters give them their body, with every variation in ink flow and mechanical wear making each plot one of a kind. His CMY hatch drawings layer cyan, magenta, and yellow into colors that shimmer in person, and his large-format work runs on both vintage machines and Bantam Tools ArtFrame plotters, in pigmented acrylic inks on cold press watercolor paper. He works from Delaware and is a fixture of the retrocomputing world as much as the plotter art one.

Artist's website (shop.paulrickards.com) ↗

16 physical works