line etching, 4" x 3" image size
In addition to squares, I have been thinking about boxes. The squares in my work are rarely completely two-dimensional, since they have spatial references.
This image comes from a painting in an earlier post, Butterfly Box. With the figure removed, the subject is the relationship of the butterfly, something wild and free, and the box, a container. I turned the etching plate up-side-down and printed it a second time, inverted, further amplifying this duality through the mirroring asymmetry. It didn't look right printed in one pass. The overlaying forms are transparent enough to maintain their separate identities but to also fuse into one form, suggestive of fluttering. The butterfly has a geometric structure like the box even though its movement is unpredictable compared with the box's stasis. Turning the box on its head makes it airborne like the butterfly and further complicates this relationship.
To me, the image is metaphoric of the balance between responsibility and freedom in politics, ecology, and personal daily life.
Swordtail Butterflies
This one is for the Butterfly Book.
