The Backyard

The Backyard.

Double-Plate Colour Etching, Chine-Colle, Hand Coloured,

printed on Pescia Magnani paper.

30x30cm. 2011.

For a while now I've been wanting to continue with the "footprint" series (see Holding On and Hibernation) and I finally got around to making another three prints of this series. This smaller square format works quite well for me to create more personal and intimate narratives of my experiences of places. The Backyard is exactly the image I have in my mind of a place where my parents lived for a year when I went back to Paraguay the first time to visit after having lived in Canada for one year. I was so so so homesick and going home was magical. I think in my mind Paraguay will always resemble paradise. My parents' backyard was entirely enclosed by brick walls behind which you could see only the neighbour's roof and some orange trees. Inside the backyard was a beautiful banana tree and a passion fruit vine (I absolutely love passion fruit and the blossoms are the most beautiful flowers in the world). The backyard was inhabited by four turtles and the two older and bigger ones had their daily routine of the male pursuing the female, slowly, step by step, until, after a few hours, the male finally reached the female and climbed her in a rather noisy and amusing mating ritual. At dusk I'd sit on the balcony and watch the bats zip through the air only distinguishable from little birds by their rapid flapping of wings. That's all...my parents' backyard.