In 1862, the Poet and Critic Baudelaire praised Etching as a direct means of communication with the artist themselves, noting that the medium allowed the viewer to gaze into the artists most intimate personality. He described Etching as ‘a profound and dangerous art, filled with treachery, which reveals the faults of an artist’s mind as clearly as his virtues’.
I use Etching as a vehicle for my subject matter as it allows me personally to explore flaws in myself and encourages a surrender to the process. Etchings often bring an essence of naturalist documentation to artwork, lead by their capacity for detail, forged and charged by the delicate line. It is this line that caresses objects so closely, hewn in metal, that allows us to feel the intimacy and seduction of the subject matter, that to me is sometimes if not always autobiographical. My imagery renders provocative scenes that are at once abject, erotic, seductive and haunting, containing fantastical and occasionally mythological overtones, surreal and ambiguous in their strangeness.
