What Happens If

My current focus is more in the process of etching and printing than on conceptualising. I am kind of worrying and questioning this, as I feel like a craftsman, not an artist. I feel like an imposto a guy that can learn a skill fast but is pretending to be an artist. The lecture yesterday about “adjusting or disrupting your practice” helped, and it came at the right time.

I feel I am mainly on the right side: interested in materials.

I am using making to study and research what happens if I try this, what happens if I change the ratios in the sugar lift solution, what happens if I do the opposite of the advice received, and what happens if I let go of control.

My work is very intuitive.

There is continuity because I am currently obsessed,

but I’m interested in both process and outcome.

My practice was photography-based. This course supported me to “break my practice apart” and start re-learning. It’s harder, I believe, to re-learn than to learn something new. This process led me to printmaking, and I believe that etching and printing will eventually feed back into my photographic practice and also interject.

There’s a sense of alchemy in etching that I find engaging, if not obsessive—the acid “biting” into the zinc plate, the playful nature of preparing and applying materials like sugarlift (a mixture of sugar, water, oil, and ink) or soap ground (made from soap, chalk, oil, and water). These handmade solutions allow me to study a variety of surfaces and textures, giving the process an experimental and tactile dimension. What happens if I let the material lead? What happens if I stop trying to control the outcome completely? Embracing mistakes and accidents.

The process of etching printing allows me to bring into images my inner feelings and thoughts in a different way. I use the medium to explore my inner self, but also to study a totally new world to me.

Etching has become a meditative and therapeutic practice for me. The slowness and repetition in each step offer in return a quiet mind. I can get lost when I work with photography projects too, but now my inner me, my emotions, are somehow influencing the work much more visibly. I can feel my emotions and my thoughts when I look at my work. There is still more to leran in terms of articulating the work I make and why. I feel vulnerable speaking about these etchings, as they are so connected with who I am and how I feel.

I’m finding that this process. of etching printing, opens up a space that photography doesn’t do as much for me, as I can create unique textures and forms that are somewhat predictable and controlled but there is a strong element of chance as well, which keeps me asking: what happens if I let chance decide? Each time I lift the paper from the etched plate after I run the press, I’m excited.

Painting with acid on metal evokes, of course, the act of classical painting, watercolours,  which I don’t master, but also the act of wet printing in the darkroom, where I would “paint with light” through the process of dodging and burning onto sensitive paper.

The tools used for etching have remained unchanged for centuries and are very elementary. A tool that can make a mark on a wax surface, an acid bath of 1 to 10, and a printing press is sufficient to make etching prints. These tools connect to a long history of image-making. The method is simple: making marks onto a wax-covered zinc plate that resists acid in some areas while letting it etch the marked areas will create spaces that will hold ink. That ink is then transferred into paper using a printing press. This is an exciting process for me manual-based, physical, fully rewarding, and therapeutic. A space, similar to a darkroom, where I can get lost in time, where my thoughts are less loud.

This is my last etch that I made yesterday