The Monotypes were initiated in direct response to the physical materiality of the thin Japanese rice paper that Schendel worked on. She attempted to create works on paper using traditional methods, but found the paper’s thinness unsuited to drawing and painting so adapted conventional printmaking techniques. Schendel’s monotypes, unlike those produced using the traditional method, are made by hand and are considered ‘printed drawings’, or ‘transfer drawings’, as opposed to prints. She covers a glass or acrylic surface with oil paint before laying a sheet of the rice paper over the top and tracing lines and shapes with her fingertip, the side of her hand or a tool; the fragile drawing appearing through friction between her hand and the paper. Schendel’s practice requires discipline whilst also allowing for a great deal of spontaneity, since the smallest mark on the paper instantly becomes permanent.

Her highly intuitive and sensitive series explores the qualities and possibilities of the monotype technique, as she records her immediate experience as a series of symbols, or lines, shapes and letters that possess an intense aura and corporeal presence. Begun in 1964, the Monotypes are divided into several ‘families’ and given nicknames. The earliest of these is a group of works characterised by the variation of thick and thin lines that refer back to her own earlier abstract paintings.