Sometimes it is quite hard to imagine [the results of printmaking processes] … it is quite exciting. There is a lot of experimentation in working on prints. It is a bit like alchemy, it is quite medieval in that sense. You are dealing with acid, water, resin, heat and you cannot control it exactly and the amount of concentration required to make a spitbite is quite exhausting in a way.

Sean Scully, interview with Julia Klüser, in Sean Scully, Prints: Catalogue raisonné 1968–1999, Vienna: Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Gravelines: Musée du Dessin et de l’Etampile Originale, Wuppertal: Von der Heydt-Museum, 1999, pp. 143–145 (p. 144).