Etchings in series, suites and sets, diptychs, triptychs, poliptyps
"Local Habitation"
“And as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, . . .
The poet’s pen turns them to shapes
and gives to airy nothing
a local habitation and a name.”
from A Midsummer's Night Dream, Shakespeare
Suite of 3 chine collé aquatint & spit-bite etchings
20 x 26" on Rives BFK edition of 10
Local Habitation.
The Flow, the Wall, The Flyer
Local Habitation is a suite of three etchings -reflections on creative manifestation.
The three pictures are drawn with aquatint in a photographic style.
- Of the the east side of Boulevard St Laurent, at Rachel in Montreal. My studio's about half-way down the street.
- Of the Inside of my next studio, near St Joseph, the figure I call The flyer dangles in front of my shelves.
- Of the wall in that studio, drawings of two 3-d portraits, myself- the flame-head clay figure- images reflecting Grunewald, Blake, and the puppets of Rilke.
For the clouds I used a rarely chosen opaque white ink coloured with the plate’s own oxide.
Spit bite is carried on water so I used that to carry the aquatint to etch the traffic flow and the cloud-like imagery.
The coalescing of water into cloud into shape, meets the photograph- a visual imprint of light.
Thus the images are created at a crossroad, the X Y axis of two abstractions, two airy nothings.
local Habitation: The Flow
Local Habitation: The Wall
Local Habitation: The Flyer
