Transience and persistence
This series has only one finalised print. Its story is one of persistence. The first prints I made from this plate were unsatisfactory, so I put it to one side. Having worked on different approaches to other images, which I thought would help here, I pulled it our again. However, I couldn’t replicate the crispness and definition achieved in earlier impressions. It took me a whole day of step-wise process alterations to work out the problem. It was the plate being clogged with old, dried out ink. I left the studio thinking the day’s work a failure. Nevertheless, I wrapped up the prints and took them home. The following week I pressed on to correct my error, first cleaning the plate thoroughly.
I didn’t open the first tissue-wrapped prints until I was later pressed to make a quick decision. I was due to visit a former colleague, recently admitted to the nearby St Cuthbert’s hospice. As he was always interested in my artwork, I wanted to show him a few recent representative prints.
On opening the package I had wrapped in the studio, it was clear that my error had become a strength. The indistinct image from the sparsely inked plate was exactly the right treatment for this transient subject. It was one of the half-dozen prints I took to show my colleague, and deserves to stand alone in this collection.
Ash Leaf, Low Laithe Dam 28 May 2018 15:22. Photo-etching and monoprint. 2020
Just to complete the story the later impression of the ‘rectified’ printing is shown below, a far more distinct image, but much less of what had originally impressed me.
Ash Leaf, Low Laithe Dam 28 May 2018 15:22. Photo-etching and monoprint. Proof. 2020
And the the original photo-etching alone:
Ash Leaf, Low Laithe Dam 28 May 2018 15:22. Photo-etching and monoprint. Proof 2020