LH  Did you think that the repetitive act of hand colouring was boring?

HH  No, absolutely not. The whole point was to make it as impersonal as possible. I have always been interested – and am still interested – in trying to make impersonal marks. I try to reject the autograph aspect of printmaking as much as possible. I like to feel that I make prints that anyone could have made.

I never watch someone hand colouring. I would only see what Cinda Sparling had done afterwards. I would look out of the window while she was hand colouring a print.

If only I could do all my work over the telephone, ring up Jack Shirreff, tell him what to do, then fly over in a helicopter and sign the edition. But as I draw all the plates myself, this would not work.

LH  What do you find so interesting about making impersonal marks?

HH  Getting away from self expression.

LH  To what extent do you think printers have influenced the final result of your prints?

HH  They enabled me to do things that I didn’t know, and often they didn’t know, were possible to do.

I have never been a printmaker who collaborates with the printing process. I ask printers what an image is going to look like when printed, but I never participate. I am a complete passenger. ‘Can you print this?’ ‘Will it look the same when it’s editioned?’ They’re the sort of questions I ask. Most printmakers are not like that. They get involved. I am a very amateur printmaker. I have great trouble making prints. I think it just happens. For instance, I don’t deliberately say, ‘I should have some relief, so I will use carborundum.’ Which is of course how you should think.

LH  That is probably why the result often looks so spontaneous.

HH  I hope it does. But it usually looks spontaneous, because everything has been shifted around so much. I never envisage anything from the beginning. That is probably why I had such great trouble learning how to make prints. I develop the print as it goes along. I don’t know what direction I am going in, ever, until I make them.

LH  Did you ever destroy a print in which the hand colourist took too much liberty?

HH  No, never. It would be very difficult to take too much liberty; there wouldn’t be anywhere to go. No doubt there have been bad pieces of hand colouring that people have destroyed before I ever saw them, but that has nothing to do with me. I am very lucky in my hand colourists; also the process is very simple.

LH  What is the atmosphere like at the 107 Workshop when you are at work?

HH  Total dedication and silence.

LH  Are you particular about the materials you use?

HH  I am very particular about the paper and the colours that are used for hand colouring.

I am not the kind of printmaker who cares about states. When I was young there was still this tradition of making prints in different states. I was never interested in trying to pretend that each state was unique.

LH  You have made various prints in series, mostly in pairs, such as Blood and Sand. Is this triggered by the nature of printmaking?

HH  Not in the slightest. It is probably the desire to make the most of an image.

LH  Is there a particular reason why you make the coloured version first and then the black-and-white version? I get the impression that you make the coloured version first, because the publisher wants to see it, and then work on the black-and-white version for yourself.

HH  That is perfectly fair about the publisher. But I think about it in colour, initially, because the nature of printmaking means that each part of the process has its own colour. That makes it much more rational, or simpler, to think about the image. The black-and-white version really shows you what you have got, without the distraction of local colour. It is the final version because it is the complete image. And not an image where you have red on top of blue on top of green, which may be harder to read.

LH  Why do you usually prefer the monochrome version?

HH  Probably because it is more complete; it is the completion of what has gone before. The colours remain as tones, but they don’t distract from the final image.

LH  You have illustrated two books, Julian Barnes’s story Evermore from Cross Channel [1996–97] and Susan Sontag’s The Way We Live Now [1990]. Did you ever contemplate making a book together with a writer or a poet?

HH  Yes, but it has never happened.

LH  Do you still feel the magic of printmaking?

HH  Yes, not least because it is done by other people. I am like the onlooker. ‘Did I do that?’ is my reaction. I still cannot believe it and I find that magic. That is probably the reason why I have gone on making prints.

LH  Do you enjoy making prints more now than you used to, because of your familiarity with the process?

HH  I have never enjoyed printmaking. But I equally hate painting. I am growing old and I do what I can.

LH  How did the group of small prints that you made in the summer of 2000 evolve?

HH  Alan Cristea simply asked me to make a group of prints.  

LH  Are you adopting a more relaxed attitude with regards to printmaking?

HH  I am busily shutting all the doors, and putting labels on everything. Printmaking is extremely demanding. I’d rather spend what energy I have left on painting. Prints are less demanding than paintings, but they don’t deliver quite so much. This group of ten prints are probably my last prints.

LH  Is there a print you particularly like?

HH  I am afraid I don’t have an overview. I’d need to see them all together. I remember making Enter Laughing [1964] and thinking, ‘This is good’. I particularly like my last big prints ‘Into the Woods’ [2000–02] and ‘Venetian Views’ [1995]. But then again, people always like their last work best, so I wouldn’t pay too much attention to that.

LH  Would you like to be remembered as a printmaker by these last prints?

HH  I have no thoughts about after I am dead. I don’t have a sense of my oeuvre at all, not of my prints. The print retrospective at the Tate Gallery in 1976 surprised me. I did not feel there was any autograph principle at work at all. The opposite really.

London, November 1999, November 2000 and January 2002