Elaine d'Esterre

Feminist Visual Artist – Paintings, Mixed Media and Etchings

Monthly Archives: July 2015


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Etching Collage about Brachina Gorge

A Searcg for ‘The Golden Spike’, 2014

I returned to a couple of unfinished prints from last year to see if renovation was possible and as they were left overs from a variable edition, maybe with the passing of time, a different aspect of the Brachina Gorge subject matter may come up.

The original print titled “In Search of the Golden Spike”, 2014 was the springboard from which the new etching collage developed. This image had lost its freshness and looked tight and laboured so I placed gold leaf over part of the image and cut away a small section to reveal the part of the underneath image. Gold leaf looked too much so I glued over it a layer of handmade paper also tearing away a small section revealing the gold leaf as well as the original intaglio. Now I feel that in the central area I need more underlying nuanced tone and line to connect both sections of the composition. Definitely needs work.

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The second image began also with the same plate but printed onto a chine colle that consisted of beige hand-made paper. At this stage however it was in vertical format and looked very pale and wan so I added gold leaf and then a layer of thin rice paper to reduce the glare and make a base and space for a second intaglio. I was bored with the image on this plate so decided to print another from a different series and see how they combined together. But by using only half of the image overcrowding may have been avoided so I elected to use the image of the head on the right side of the plate but which printed left in this artwork.

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The two heads turning toward each other are separated by the image depicting the golden spike as though having searched for its location in Brachina Gorge they now ‘become’ part of the landscape. I like the idea of how over time we do become soil and are eventually part of earth’s stratified terrain.


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Mungo Collage and Sounds of Drought

Mungo Landscape Elements, 2015
The Sounds of Drought 8.

Both these images, the composition and forms were arranged randomly, settled into this format as I pushed around each element then blew air onto the, at first, carefully arranged pieces of collage and then let hand made paper waft around and land anywhere. A bit more shuffling around, walking away, letting a few more elements land around central pieces of imagery, tearing more paper, overlapping to obtain transparencies and nuanced areas until the desired effect settled in my mind.

The pieces of collage consisted of torn drypoint etchings, intaglio etching, pastel and handmade papers as well as dotted pianola roll paper.


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Collage with Drypoint Etchings about Mungo

I continue this Mungo series with the addition of three more collages consisting of pieces of printed collagraph, gold leaf, handmade paper and pastel paper on BFK Rives print making paper. The strange glow of sunset on the Mungo dunes has eluded me in the past as the chocolate box look was an ever present danger. But I’ve often tried to depict my sunrise and sunset feelings of excitement, anticipation and joy.

The Last Ray at Mungo, 2015, drypoint, collagraph and collage
Setting Sun at Mungo, 2015, drypoint, copper leaf and paper on BFK Rives
The Melting Heat At Mungo, 2015, collage and drypoint


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Collagraphs about Mungo

Red Seepage into the Dunes of Mungo, 2015
Line of Sight across the Dunes of Mungo, 2015, collagraph, drypoint and chine colle, 25×40 cm

Collage from previous etchings are mixed into the second collagraph, whereas, in the first, I combined a torn collagraph element with another piece of collagraph. This grey piece of rectangular shaped BFK Rives printmaking paper, obtained from a ghost washy print that picked up some ink remnant left on the plate, resembled part of Mungo’s terrain between the red dust bearing hills and the pink dunes.

In the second image the soft grey area was printed from another washy (drop of gum turps. and a little oil ) ghost print which being very liquid spread across to the edge of page as it passed under the roller. Then I combined two pieces of torn image, one consisting of an intaglio and the other a drypoint on perspex from past leftovers, into ‘seeing heads’. The beige surround alludes to viewing as tho through a frame.

I was trying to depict two types of vision into a single image. One head is sightless and ‘sees’ as if from below the landscape and ‘becomes’ the landscape, and the other sighted head and torso view the landscape through and with perspectival visual construction.