Florence Alfano McEwin - "Early Snow"

My current works ,including Early Snow ,began in concept  during the pandemic, as a documentation of  the passage of  season and time. I was inspired in part, by Botanist Anna Atkins’, who worked in the 1860’s in the UK, and whose photographic documentation of flora was in cyanotype, an early photographic technique. She called these multiples, versions rather than the editions  of  the printmaker. 

Within my monoprint versions, a quietness is both a conscious and semiconscious manner of dealing with the reflections and anxieties of climate change.    As descriptions of extreme heat washed over the planet, in my Wyoming home even in summer the opposite dominated, a cold gradually engulfed Wyoming. This previously bitter cold winter with multiple broken pipes, gave an anxiety to seasonal change at the beginning of the following,  current winter ,  when I began Early Snow.

In this piece , the vegetation provides structural and emotional basis for the work, a re- invented reality.  Generally ,I use weeds and backyard vegetation, in this case my Russian Olive  tree. The  vegetation is printed as a collagraph or raised surface.  These prints use counter, ghost and direct print techniques, with the addition of pochoir, a hand done stencil, as  block out or direct print as needed.  As the work takes a life of its own , one responds to its needs.  Each version uses  multiple runs through the press to develop images on handmade Japanese Unryu meaning dragon tail -washi - meaning paper. The inks are modified in viscosity for an infinite, transparent or opaque variation. Compositionally ,each hue  has its own demands. Then the  selective placement of multiple colors, successively , brings life to the work in an unpredictable and sometimes pleasant surprise.  That said , I am constantly striving  to unite a nuanced painting sensibility within the confines of the print and to that end the layering and obliterating manner of application contributes. 

Always, the subliminal apprehension of climate crisis exists in my work alongside of the inherent beauty of nature deconstructed and reinvented into its’ own realism. 

As an aside, I truly believe, to paraphrase  painter Wm. De Kooning , each artist does the making from their own particular soup of experiences. My mother’s family from Italy were paper traders in Japan ,where they intermarried, beginning in  the 1820’s and my father’s family relocating to Argentina from Rome around the same time also with inter marriage with the native population, cultivated olive trees. Wyoming has been my home for most of my adult life.