"White"

"Spy Game"  etching

The following page shows some examples of some new small etchings I have completed.  They are characterized by drawing,  bluntness, and a use of White.  They have eschewed techniques that require multiple stages, different colors, embossing, or complex tonalities.  This is out necessity, being away from the studio, they have been largely drawn in isolation, but the treatment is also out of respect for the subjects.  

"Jehovah's witness"  etching

(left)

"Portrait (Pender Street)  etching

(right)

"Underground Portrait #3"  etching

Remember Richard Avedon's portraits, were they called "West," I cannot remember.  They are people from middle America, the dispossesed, wild, weird, captured by his camera in front of White backdrops.  In contrast to Yosef Karsch's rich portraits in front of black dark curtains the work on white seemed clean and light.  The white replaced the ambience, density, and drama of the work that preceded it.  The White of these plates have a sense of Avedon about them, because of the strang characters and the White.  But the works are also uniquely prints and that is what I will refer to next.

What has attracted me to printmaking is its directness.  Yes printmakers are obsessed with mark making, always wanting to know how "that" was done in order to expand ones visual vocabulary.  Painters approach a copper plate with an appreciation for the simplicity of drawing.  Historically Goya's "Disasters..." combine the clarity of line and tone in small devastating indictments of war.  Rembrandt fascination with knitting lines together and even his thrill of long black drypoint scratches demonstrate a love of drawing.  Their painting was where reputations were won but rarely had the graphic and stark ... pure ... impact of those prints.  Today Lucien Freud continues in the painters tradition as he works in print.  His etchings are a simple celebration of drawing, they do not parallel his paintings, but they are escapes into the simplicity of line.  

So these new prints are exotic and White like Avedon yet they celebrate the boldness of a drawn surface.  They are about the "immediacy of NOW."  They attempt to connect to no larger body of work but simply are derived from a premise of curiosity, image making, bluntness, a lack of complexity.  

"Tea and Cigarette"  etching