Summer Fiction: Catenate / 2017

Fieser, Stephen
American
Contemporary
Drypoint engraving

$35.00

 

Violet-earth pigment on Stonehenge paper

Pencil signed

Edition: artist’s proofs only

Image: 3 ½” x 4 ½” (plate size is slightly larger)

Sheet: 8 ¼” x 10 ¾”

Pristine condition

 

 

1 in stock

Description

Stephen Fieser (American, born 1955) is a graphic artist producing prints, drawings, illustration and design. His primary subject is the human figure.

 

The Summer Fiction figure studies are inspired by bathers at City Island –a park in the Susquehanna River, belonging to Pennsylvania’s capital city.

The figures begin with sketches or photographs made on the beach. These images are translated into studio drawings, with many adjustments of pose and gesture. Physiognomy is reinvented, while age and even gender may change. Most of the hands and feet are pure invention. Sometimes only fragments of the original motif remain.

From a great pile of such studio drawings, figures are selected and recombined in new drawings to create imagined relationships. Then some of these composite images achieving certain qualities of emotion and design are drawn once again– this time with engraving tools on smooth copper plates. The plates are always in a flux, as the image continues to develop over days and weeks. Several proofs are pulled after every few hours of work. Only some of those proofs are kept and signed, while the unsatisfactory ones are destroyed. The result is a series of prints that records the slow development of the drypoint engraving. While the ultimate number of proofs remains open, it is unlikely that there will be more than fifty.

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