New Prints, Cardboard and Potato

Overlap, ink on Japanese paper; image size 9 3/4 x 13 1/2, paper size 17 1/2 x 21 1/2 in.; ed 4

Occasionally I finish a work that simply makes me happy; when I tacked this print up on my kitchen door, looking at it pleased me, made me feel a little jolly. Some of it is the color, the grayed red and blue that ended up working well together, and some of it the shapes. I had originally planned the escaping oval to be on the top of the composition, but then felt it looked much better at bottom. 

Overlap detail

In this detail, you can see my usual imperfection in printing, a basic character of using cardboard as a plate. I don't know if my buoyant feeling is shared by anyone else, but it's nice to have unabashed good feeling about a piece from time to time. 

Untitled 1, ink on Japanese paper; 2 pieces, each 21 1/4 x 13 in. 

After printing the edition of Overlap, I made four potato prints, of which two or three might be in the maybe folder, but I'll put them with the accepted ones since I'm not too terribly ambivalent. I decided to stop titling each work; it was too much trouble and invited too much direct pointing at metaphors. So now, Untitled with a number. For Untitled 1 I put two pieces of paper together and stamped a shape across them; very simple and minimal.

Untitled 2, ink on Japanese paper, 11 x 7 1/2 in. 

My thoughts still return, again and again, to Japanese Rinpa art, and the eloquence of its empty spaces.

Untitled 3, ink on Japanese paper; 17 x 15 in. 

The first shapes that I placed on this sheet of paper were the three ovals at bottom, stamping without re-inking so that the images became more ghostly from one to the next; then the purple diamonds and lastly the circle above. I'm not sure that the shift of opacity works with the other more solid shapes; the jury is out on this one. 

Untitled 4, ink on Twinrocker paper; 14 1/2 x 14 1/2 in. 

This image is printed on a rough watercolor paper, which I think has too much of an irregular surface, however beautiful, for this kind of print. I printed the three descending diamonds, then red hexagons on top of them, all quite irregular in ink coverage. But maybe, as with all the prints I've been doing, that imperfection is a key to their character.