James Groleau - prints and biography
SALT GRANITE SPRUCE
Salt Granite Spruce is a series of color mezzotints depicting coastal Maine. Intimations of the Arts and Crafts Movement of the early twentieth century are evident in the palette of greens and grays with additional touches of violet eggplant and ochre.
By: James Groleau
Medium: Color mezzotint with chine collé
Image Size: 5 x 12 inches
Edition Size: 50
By: James Groleau
Medium: Color mezzotint with chine collé
Image Size: 5 x 12 inches
Edition Size: 50
Grey Evening Sorrento is part of James Groleau’s Salt Granite Spruce series, a body of mezzotints drawn from the rugged coastline and inland waterways of Maine. Through dense blacks, subtle tonal transitions, and carefully controlled highlights, Groleau captures the quiet gravity of granite outcrops, spruce-lined shores, and shifting light along tidal waters.
By: James Groleau
Medium: Color mezzotint with chine collé
Image Size: 5 x 12 inches
Edition Size: 50
Night at Granite Bluff is part of James Groleau’s Salt Granite Spruce series, a body of mezzotints drawn from the rugged coastline and inland waterways of Maine. Through dense blacks, subtle tonal transitions, and carefully controlled highlights, Groleau captures the quiet gravity of granite outcrops, spruce-lined shores, and shifting light along tidal waters.
By: James Groleau
Medium: Color mezzotint with chine collé
Image Size: 5 x 12 inches
Edition Size: 50
Grand Marsh is part of James Groleau’s Salt Granite Spruce series, a body of mezzotints drawn from the rugged coastline and inland waterways of Maine. Through dense blacks, subtle tonal transitions, and carefully controlled highlights, Groleau captures the quiet gravity of granite outcrops, spruce-lined shores, and shifting light along tidal waters.
By: James Groleau
Medium: Color mezzotint with chine collé
Image Size: 5 x 12 inches
Edition Size: 50
Corea Harbor captures the quiet, contemplative beauty of the Maine coast near the fishing village of Corea. The soft tonal transitions of the mezzotint process capture the muted evening light over a cluster of spruce-covered islands. The scene is both tranquil and enduring—granite, water, and sky rendered in a harmony of subtle hues and fine textures.
By: James Groleau
Medium: Color mezzotint with chine collé
Image Size: 5 x 12 inches
Edition Size: 50
Frenchman Bay is part of James Groleau’s Salt Granite Spruce series, a body of mezzotints drawn from the rugged coastline and inland waterways of Maine. Through dense blacks, subtle tonal transitions, and carefully controlled highlights, Groleau captures the quiet gravity of granite outcrops, spruce-lined shores, and shifting light along tidal waters.
By: James Groleau
Medium: Color mezzotint with chine collé
Image Size: 5 x 12 inches
Edition Size: 50
Storm Cloud Over Sand Cove is part of James Groleau’s Salt Granite Spruce series, a body of mezzotints drawn from the rugged coastline and inland waterways of Maine. Through dense blacks, subtle tonal transitions, and carefully controlled highlights, Groleau captures the quiet gravity of granite outcrops, spruce-lined shores, and shifting light along tidal waters.
By: James Groleau
Medium: Color mezzotint with chine collé
Image Size: 5 x 12 inches
Edition Size: 50
Low Tide at Little Moose is part of James Groleau’s Salt Granite Spruce series, a body of mezzotints drawn from the rugged coastline and inland waterways of Maine. Through dense blacks, subtle tonal transitions, and carefully controlled highlights, Groleau captures the quiet gravity of granite outcrops, spruce-lined shores, and shifting light along tidal waters.
By: James Groleau
Medium: Color mezzotint with chine collé
Image Size: 5 x 12 inches
Edition Size: 50
East Machias River Bend is part of James Groleau’s Salt Granite Spruce series, a body of mezzotints drawn from the rugged coastline and inland waterways of Maine. Through dense blacks, subtle tonal transitions, and carefully controlled highlights, Groleau captures the quiet gravity of granite outcrops, spruce-lined shores, and shifting light along tidal waters.
By: James Groleau
Medium: Color mezzotint with chine collé
Image Size: 5 x 12 inches
Edition Size: 50
Mahar Point at Pembroke is part of James Groleau’s Salt Granite Spruce series, a body of mezzotints drawn from the rugged coastline and inland waterways of Maine. Through dense blacks, subtle tonal transitions, and carefully controlled highlights, Groleau captures the quiet gravity of granite outcrops, spruce-lined shores, and shifting light along tidal waters.
By: James Groleau
Medium: Color mezzotint with chine collé
Image Size: 5 x 12 inches
Edition Size: 50
Black Water is part of James Groleau’s Salt Granite Spruce series, a body of mezzotints drawn from the rugged coastline and inland waterways of Maine. Through dense blacks, subtle tonal transitions, and carefully controlled highlights, Groleau captures the quiet gravity of granite outcrops, spruce-lined shores, and shifting light along tidal waters.
By: James Groleau
Medium: Color mezzotint with chine collé
Image Size: 5 x 12 inches
Edition Size: 50
The Cliffs of Little Moose is part of James Groleau’s Salt Granite Spruce series, a body of mezzotints drawn from the rugged coastline and inland waterways of Maine. Through dense blacks, subtle tonal transitions, and carefully controlled highlights, Groleau captures the quiet gravity of granite outcrops, spruce-lined shores, and shifting light along tidal waters.
By: James Groleau
Medium: Color mezzotint with chine collé
Image Size: 5 x 12 inches
Edition Size: 50
Spruce and Granite is part of James Groleau’s Salt Granite Spruce series, a body of mezzotints drawn from the rugged coastline and inland waterways of Maine. Through dense blacks, subtle tonal transitions, and carefully controlled highlights, Groleau captures the quiet gravity of granite outcrops, spruce-lined shores, and shifting light along tidal waters.
By: James Groleau
Medium: Color mezzotint with chine collé
Image Size: 5 x 12 inches
Edition Size: 50
By: James Groleau
Medium: Color mezzotint with chine collé
Image Size: 5 x 12 inches
Edition Size: 50
Blueberry Field Near Eggemoggin is part of James Groleau’s Salt Granite Spruce series, a body of mezzotints drawn from the rugged coastline and inland waterways of Maine. Through dense blacks, subtle tonal transitions, and carefully controlled highlights, Groleau captures the quiet gravity of granite outcrops, spruce-lined shores, and shifting light along tidal waters.
By: James Groleau
Medium: Color mezzotint with chine collé
Image Size: 5 x 12 inches
Edition Size: 50
Lone Tree Schoodic Point is part of James Groleau’s Salt Granite Spruce series, a body of mezzotints drawn from the rugged coastline and inland waterways of Maine. Through dense blacks, subtle tonal transitions, and carefully controlled highlights, Groleau captures the quiet gravity of granite outcrops, spruce-lined shores, and shifting light along tidal waters.
FRAMED PRINTS from the Flowers of Turbulence series
By: James Groleau
Medium: 5 plate color mezzotint with chine collé
Image Size: 8 x 8 inches
Edition Size: 35
Framed
Militarismus is from James Groleau’s Flowers of Turbulence, a series based on nineteenth-century daguerreotype portraits of children, reimagined through the lens of modern conflict. A child faces the viewer with a fixed, solemn gaze, her flushed cheeks and fragile body rendered with unsettling vulnerability.
Behind her, a ceremonial staff emits a thin trail of smoke, introducing the presence of militarism as something inherited rather than chosen. Groleau contrasts the innocence of the child with symbols of authority and violence, suggesting how ideologies are quietly imposed long before they are understood.
By: James Groleau
Medium: mezzotint
Image Size: 8 x 8 inches
Edition Size: 25
Framed (also available unframed)
This is an early print by Groleau, showing a young man surrounded by “congress” of owls sharing their opinions.
ABSENCE OF MALICE / PORTRAITS OF IRAQ
The Absence of Passion is a suite of fifteen mezzotint portraits reflecting the trauma of warfare. Tempered by the partial concealment of facial expression the images depict a range of emotional responses to war from rage to resignation.
By: James Groleau
Medium: mezzotint
Image Size: 12" x 10"
Edition Size: 20
Basra belongs to James Groleau’s Absence of Passion / Portraits of Iraq series, a group of mezzotints that reflect on distance, conflict, and the quiet human cost of war. Rather than literal portraiture or documentary imagery, Groleau employs restrained tonal fields, softened forms, and deep blacks to evoke absence, memory, and psychological weight.
By: James Groleau
Medium: mezzotint
Image Size: 12" x 10"
Edition Size: 20
Karbala belongs to James Groleau’s Absence of Passion / Portraits of Iraq series, a group of mezzotints that reflect on distance, conflict, and the quiet human cost of war. Rather than literal portraiture or documentary imagery, Groleau employs restrained tonal fields, softened forms, and deep blacks to evoke absence, memory, and psychological weight.
By: James Groleau
Medium: mezzotint
Image Size: 12" x 10"
Edition Size: 20
Mosul belongs to James Groleau’s Absence of Passion / Portraits of Iraq series, a group of mezzotints that reflect on distance, conflict, and the quiet human cost of war. Rather than literal portraiture or documentary imagery, Groleau employs restrained tonal fields, softened forms, and deep blacks to evoke absence, memory, and psychological weight.
By: James Groleau
Medium: mezzotint
Image Size: 12" x 10"
Edition Size: 20
Ramadi belongs to James Groleau’s Absence of Passion / Portraits of Iraq series, a group of mezzotints that reflect on distance, conflict, and the quiet human cost of war. Rather than literal portraiture or documentary imagery, Groleau employs restrained tonal fields, softened forms, and deep blacks to evoke absence, memory, and psychological weight.
By: James Groleau
Medium: mezzotint
Image Size: 12" x 10"
Edition Size: 20
Riyadh belongs to James Groleau’s Absence of Passion / Portraits of Iraq series, a group of mezzotints that reflect on distance, conflict, and the quiet human cost of war. Rather than literal portraiture or documentary imagery, Groleau employs restrained tonal fields, softened forms, and deep blacks to evoke absence, memory, and psychological weight.
By: James Groleau
Medium: mezzotint
Image Size: 12" x 10"
Edition Size: 20
Sinjar belongs to James Groleau’s Absence of Passion / Portraits of Iraq series, a group of mezzotints that reflect on distance, conflict, and the quiet human cost of war. Rather than literal portraiture or documentary imagery, Groleau employs restrained tonal fields, softened forms, and deep blacks to evoke absence, memory, and psychological weight.
By: James Groleau
Medium: mezzotint
Image Size: 12" x 10"
Edition Size: 20
Arbil is from a suite of fifteen mezzotint portraits reflecting the trauma of warfare. Tempered by the partial concealment of facial expression, the images depict a range of emotional responses to war, from rage to resignation. James Groleau was the model for all images in the suite.
OTHER PRINTS
By: James Groleau
Medium: mezzotint
Imagesize: 7 x 5 inches
Edition of 50
Outbreak V is part of James Groleau’s Blood Bone Elegy, a series conceived in the months following the September 11 attacks and centered on an allegorical struggle between Life and Death. Nude figures rendered as exposed muscle stand shoulder to shoulder with skeletons, their bodies locked in rigid, almost choreographed poses.
The image suggests contagion and escalation—death no longer guiding from behind, but fully present among the living. Groleau collapses distinctions between flesh and bone, implying a moment when conflict spreads beyond control and the boundary between life and death dissolves.
By: James Groleau
Medium: mezzotint
Imagesize: 7 x 5 inches
Edition of 50
The Lesson: A Prelude to War is part of James Groleau’s Blood Bone Elegy, a series conceived in the months following the September 11 attacks and centered on an allegorical struggle between Life and Death. A woman plays a violin, her expression inward and restrained, while a skeletal figure behind her guides her hands, subtly controlling her movements.
The image suggests instruction through domination: music becomes an imposed discipline rather than an act of choice. Rendered in dark reds and shadowed blacks, the composition conveys inevitability and unease, emphasizing the loss of autonomy as death quietly directs the living. Groleau focuses not on open violence, but on the moment when control is first asserted—when war begins before it is visible.
By: James Groleau
Medium: mezzotint
Imagesize: 8 x 8 inches
Edition of 25
Also available framed for $500
Matters of Opinion demonstrates James Groleau’s broader engagement with mezzotint and printmaking beyond landscape and place-based series. Through controlled tonal contrasts and carefully modulated surfaces, the work reflects his ongoing interest in psychological space, form, and the expressive potential of darkness and light.
By: James Groleau
Medium: mezzotint
Imagesize: 7 x 5 inches
Edition of 50
Passion IV is part of James Groleau’s Blood Bone Elegy, a series conceived in the months following the September 11 attacks and focused on an allegorical struggle between Life and Death. Dark, grasping hands rise into a blood-red sky as birds scatter overhead, their flight caught between panic and escape.
The image suggests fervor tipping into violence—emotion unmoored from reason and driven upward into collective action. Groleau uses stark silhouettes and turbulent color to convey a moment when passion no longer resists destruction, but becomes one of its instruments.
By: James Groleau
Medium: mezzotint
Image Size: 8 x 8 inches
Edition Size: 35
Thistle is a mezzotint by James Groleau depicting a solitary thistle plant emerging sharply from a dark, nocturnal ground. The spined green leaves and vivid purple bloom are rendered with striking clarity against a dense black field, while surrounding grasses recede into softened, rhythmic forms. The contrast between the thistle’s luminous presence and the enveloping darkness heightens a sense of quiet tension and resilience. Executed with Groleau’s characteristic control of tonal depth, the image balances botanical specificity with psychological atmosphere, emphasizing isolation, endurance, and the charged stillness of night.
By: James Groleau
Medium: mezzotint
ImageSize: 8 x 8 inches
EditionSize: 100
From the Flowers of Turbulence series, Gardenia is a mezzotint by James Groleau centered on a pale, fully opened gardenia resting in a shallow red vessel. The softly illuminated petals unfold in layered curves, rendered with delicate tonal transitions that contrast against a deep, shadowed ground. Behind the flower, patterned textile forms in dark reds and browns introduce a quiet ornamental rhythm, lending the composition a sense of interior space and contemplative stillness. Groleau’s precise control of mezzotint texture allows the flower to appear luminous yet restrained, balancing sensual detail with a subdued, meditative atmosphere.
James Groleau
James Groleau (born 1960 in Lewiston, Maine) is a self-taught American printmaker widely recognized for his mastery of mezzotint, as well as etching, aquatint, collage, and mixed-media printmaking. Known for his command of dense blacks, subtle tonal gradations, and psychologically charged imagery, Groleau’s work moves fluidly between quiet landscape observation and deeply introspective figurative and conceptual themes.
Groleau discovered mezzotint while studying at City College of San Francisco, a moment that proved pivotal in shaping his artistic direction. Drawn to the medium’s capacity for darkness, nuance, and emotional weight, he developed a distinctive visual language characterized by rich surfaces and carefully controlled light. His mezzotints often explore the tension between presence and absence, memory and place, using tonal depth as a means of conveying atmosphere and interior states rather than literal description.
Throughout his career, Groleau has pursued both representational and thematic bodies of work. His Maine landscape series, including views of the state’s rugged coastline, rivers, and marshes, reflects a lifelong connection to place and a meditative engagement with the natural world. In contrast, more conceptually driven series—such as his portraits related to Iraq and the Middle East—address themes of conflict, distance, and human consequence with restraint and moral seriousness, avoiding overt narrative in favor of quiet reflection.
Groleau’s work has been widely exhibited in the United States and internationally, including a notable solo exhibition at the Ekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts in Russia. He has received numerous awards, grants, and fellowships in recognition of his contributions to contemporary printmaking, including a prestigious fellowship from the MacDowell Colony. His prints are held in significant public and institutional collections, among them the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Portland Museum of Art (Maine), the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Oakland Museum of California, the National Museum of Fine Art in Antwerp, Belgium, and the Janet Turner Print Museum.
James Groleau divides his time between the San Francisco Bay Area and coastal Maine. Across decades of sustained studio practice, his work has remained grounded in the physical discipline of traditional printmaking while continually expanding its expressive and emotional range.
Despair and the Salt Air
Click on the image below to view this 15 minute film on James Groleau. Interviews with the artist delves into his discovery of the mezzotint and eventual mastery of the process.
For more information on the mezzotint process read our article:
History of the mezzotint
Other artist you might be interested in:
Art Werger
David Smith-Harrison
Jean Michel Mathieux-Marie
By: James Groleau
Medium: Color mezzotint with chine collé
Image Size: 5 x 12 inches
Edition Size: 50
Intimations of the Arts and Crafts Movement of the early twentieth century are evident in the palette of greens and grays, with additional touches of violet, eggplant and ochre.