Leaving Behind

Leaving Behind.

Etching, Chine-Collé.

30cm30cm.

2012.

Do you know the feeling you get after travelling by airplane through multiple time zones, when you've been on one side of the world in the morning and you arrive on the other side in the evening? It always feels to me as if part of myself, or part of my soul has stayed behind and needs a little longer than the physical body to come along. In my most recent work I'm exploring different experiences about farewell, of holding on and letting go, of separations and longing, but also of new beginnings. In Leaving Behind I tried to portray the sense of leaving parts of myself behind in all the places where I've lived (Paraguay, Germany, Canada). To me that seems similar to the feeling I described earlier. Sometimes it appears that part of me is still there, in a place where I have spent part of my life, where I've shared experiences with others, and where I connected with a place, its vegetation, its animals, its climate. Part of myself remains in a place, but fades into the past as I go on. In a way I always reach out for that part of me that lives elsewhere and my mind is always in multiple places throughout the day, but I also know that the past remains in the past. I think the gesture of the figure of the present me in the piece is a little ambiguous; it could be either a plea to the other me to stay or a release of her into the past.

I have a few new pieces coming up in this series. The previous piece - Dreaming of a Garden - also connects with the theme of farewell in that it is a dream of new beginnings.

Dreaming of a Garden

Dreaming of a Garden.

Double-Plate Colour Etching, Chine-Collé, Hand Coloured.

40cmx60cm.

2012.

What better thing to do in mid February than to dream of a garden? This image has been growing in my head for two years now and finally I've given it life on paper. As long as I can think I've wanted a garden and being a gardener would have been my second choice profession after becoming an artist. As a kid I used to plant and grow things all over the place, but since my nomadic student years in rented places, planting and growing things has mostly been a dream. Here in our apartment in Minneapolis there is no dirt around at all, only concrete. I think dreaming of a garden is more than simply wishing to be able to plant, grow and harvest. It is a very deep sitting desire to settle down and to put down roots. Well, for the next few years I'll have to content myself with being a nomad, but perhaps one day I'll put down roots somewhere and be able to grow my garden.

I'm in the Minneapolis Star Tribune

Showing my work at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking has given me a little bit of publicity out here, I guess partly because Highpoint chose my Red River Trail to be the image for the invitation postcard. Anyways, in an exhibition review in the Star Tribune, the paper printed one of my images and in the article is a beautiful little review of my work (last paragraph under 'musings on nature'). Click here to view the article.

Also, Sandesh Nicol wrote about my Red River Trail on her blog after seeing it at the exhibit. Click here to read her impressions of my work.

My Book is out!

"This is a gorgeous book by an exciting young artist, inspired by the extraordinary journey made by her grandfather from Canada to Paraguay in the late 1920s. David, a farm boy from Southern Manitoba, is excited when his family, in search of a new home, decides to leave wintry and white Canada behind to start a long journey by train, ship, and oxcart to South America. Along the way he takes in colourful impressions of New York’s skyscrapers, the ocean, flying fish, crocodiles, foreign cities, and many more exciting things that let him know he is going the right way. This is an exceptional children’s book, but also a beautiful art work for all ages. In addition, the dual-language text (English and German) adds a valuable educational dimension."

David's Trip to Paraguay/Davids Reise in das Land der vielen Farben

Miriam Rudolph

CMU Press 2011, 32 pages, hardcover, English and German, $22.00

ISBN 978-0-920718-91-9

To order, contact the CMU Bookstore (204-487-3300, 1-877-231-4570 toll free, or by e-mail, cmubookstore@cmu.ca),

It is also available online at MennoMedia, at McNally Robinson in Winnipeg, and the Winnipeg Art Gallery shop.

Red River Trail Detail

This is an update to the previous post. I exchanged the picture below with one where the embossment in the snow areas is actually visible. In this detail the two men in the foreground are carving a snow sculpture of a canoe with voyageurs in it. I thought it was a fitting sculpture for a print depicting the French part of Winnipeg. I based the sculpture on a photograph I found on the internet. Unfortunately I was unable to find the name of the sculptor.

Red River Trail

Red River Trail.

Etching, Blind Embossment, Hand Coloured.

55x85cm. 2011.

To not entirely despair while working on the zoo print, I had to start something new. The Red River Trail is an image I've had in my mind ever since I made the Assiniboine River Trail. The reason was that somebody pointed out to me that in the location of the current Louis Riel sculpture in front of the Manitoba legislature there was initially a different Louis Riel sculpture. Since it was a really controversial piece, displaying a politician in the nude, a bit distorted and abstracted, a new sculpture was commissioned and the old one moved to Saint Boniface. Check out the link if you want more information. Anyways, I always had this second image with the other Louis Riel sculpture as a parallel piece in mind (I did take the freedom to move the sculpture from behind the collége to the shores of the river). In addition, the Assiniboine River Trail was closed last winter dueto bad ice conditions and I spent some time on the Red River Trail, which gave me some new vantage points and new experiences to put in the piece. The car in the river was initially meant as a little toungue in cheek exaggeration since I put a bike in the previous river trail piece, but just after I printed my first proof last week, I came across an article in the Winnipeg Free Press where police pull out two vehicles from the river. That made me chuckle a bit. I really enjoyed working with the buildings of historic Saint Boniface. It's a part of town I haven't spent much time in, but these are the buildings I saw when I biked on the other side of the river or that stood out when I went down Provencher boulevard. During my last visit in Winnipeg a month ago I went for a walk through Saint Boniface to get some more close up inspiration for this print and it was lovely to walk through all the yellow fallen leaves, taking pictures and taking in the surroundings.

El Jardín

El Jardín.

Double-Plate Colour Etching.

40x60cm. 2011.

It has taken me ridiculously long to get the aquatints (the different etched tones) just right on this plate, but I'm finally almost where I want the piece to be. I'm still working on the plate, but I decided to post this proof already so you get to see something new on my blog. It took me weeks to perfect the aquatints again. Even though I'm completely familiar with the processes, a new studio with new materials just adds so many new variables that many things can go wrong. I've scraped large parts of my plate back to a smooth surface over and over and over again to re-etch them. First the aquatint grain was too coarse, then it etched with an odd pattern on the plate (grease streaks on the surface from the cleaning rags), then it etched too dark and now I can't decide where to stop with the editing and I decided to brighten the background a bit.