“This is where I find a lot of magic: in the ghost.”

Printmaker Nanette Wallace specializes in monotypes. She paints in ink on a plexiglass plate, runs a single print, then uses the leftover image—the ghost—as a springboard to the next composition, and the next, until she finds an artistically satisfying composition. It’s a practice rooted in spontaneity rather than planning.

Wallace showed me around her Portland, Oregon, studio this spring and explained the ways she combines impeccable figure drawing technique, inspiration and chance to make beautiful scenes of people and the natural world.

Find her work here.