Last Embrace

Last Embrace.

Double-Plate Colour Etching

(photoetch, softground, sugar lift, spit bite), Chine-Colle.

30cm x30 cm. 2012.

Last Embrace is part of my Farewell series of prints. I tried to capture that last moment, the last merging of two worlds before a separation, the last touch between two people. It is such a precious moment and despite all the repeated farewells in my life, the parting never gets easier. The second figure in the piece is no one in particular (although I must admit it resembles Terry quite a bit...which has no particular meaning). I wanted it to be a generic figure to stand in for all the farewells in my life. I looked at various paintings and prints by Gustav Klimt and Edvard Munch prior to working on this piece. Both artists work with the visual representation of emotion a lot. I think Klimt rubbed off on me when I drew the robe with the tears. It undeniably resembles the patterned robes in Klimt's paintings. I added the rain cloud as a counter weight to the figures and as a parallel to the robe of tears. I've had surprisingly many goodbyes on rainy days which always adds to the sad, gloomy mood and the whole universe appears to grieve with me when I have to let go of someone. This piece has more empty space than most of my work, which I think reflects that emptyness I feel after a farewell. The trees obviously represent the different worlds we live in and the brief joining of worlds during the embrace.

I had to do a lot of playing around and testprinting before I got the rain the way I wanted it to look. I was aiming for a hazy (after having looked at a lot of spit bite prints by Norman Ackroyd) yet substantial rain shower and after multiple sugar lift etches that gave me the droplet patterns and many many spit bites I got some of the misty rain effect.

My Book Launch

Tomorrow evening, March 14th, is my book launch of David's Trip to Paraguay, the Land of Amazing Colours at McNally Robinson at 7pm in the Atrium.

On Thursday evening at 7pm I'm doing a book signing at the Winnipeg Art Gallery shop.

CBC radio Winnipeg did an interview with me posted a review on my blog.

Check it out here.

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.