Woman, Bird, Butterfly, etching, watercolor, 2006-2007
Woman and Bird (Spring), etching, watercolor, 2006-2007
If these seem strange, then you probably haven't come to terms with Joseph Beuys. I have long admired his work and, being a painter, find his drawings and watercolors particularly fascinating. They are succinct, draw on pre-verbal conceptions, and are the result of a search for meaning rather than people-pleasing. In comparison, mine are much more digestible, and I'm not sure that that is a good thing. While I will continue to try to dig deeper, I seem to go towards a certain amount of description in my work. It's something for me to consider and the type of problem an artist has to wrestle with.
These aren't going in The Butterfly Book, unless I decide to make new plates based on the images, because they are larger plates that I printed at another time for another edition. Painting on leftover prints (proofs - prints that aren't uniform enough to be included in the edition) is wonderful. It is a theme and variations game where the artist can experiment in taking the same basic idea in different directions. Drawing on a tablet computer is amazing for the same reason. Makes me want to go make some work...
