This is the final of the five prints on aluminum leaf in the Wanderer suite. All five prints were generated by taking high resolution scans from one drawing over the course of about a year. The first several prints show layers of mostly black or grey marks being laid down one on top of the other. This image is different. By this point the original drawing had gotten quite dark– the only way forward was to draw into the image with very light marks, a kind of erasing, almost. These “negative” marks leap out from the drawing now that it has been printed over the highly reflective aluminum leaf. In the right light, they seem to float in front of the paper.
This is one of the two prints in the series that uses a little bit of 24 karat gold leaf for a special touch. Here there is just a simple crescent of gold leaf. It follows the contours of a mark that was already present in the drawing. I like that there is a reference in this one mark to the waxing crescent moon. This is the phase of the moon that occurs just before the totally dark new moon. It’s most often seen low in the eastern sky in the very early morning, just before dawn. It felt like the right way to end this series of images– as much a beginning as an ending.
Look at the post introducing the “Wanderer” series to understand what I mean when I say that this image has been printed on paper prepared with aluminum leaf using an archival all black digital printing process.
