central park

A view of the duomo of Siena

A famous view of a famous building. How many tourists to Siena turn the corner by San Domenico and stop to see the city rising like barnacles on the opposite hill? I know I did.

This etching is based on a pencil drawing I made on site, which you can see here. I made a quick watercolour as well, as the sun went down. See it here.

Note how both watercolour and drawing show a mirror image of this picture. That's because the process of etching flips the image.

Siena

This is not the only picture I've made of Siena, or even of the Basilica di Servi in Siena, but it might be my favourite. It's an etching, made on an aluminum plate, but based on a pencil sketch I did on site.

The colour comes from chine collé, a technique in which a thin sheet of paper - hand tinted tissue from Japan in this case - is pressed into the paper support of the picture by the etching press.

The picture was etched and printed at the Open Studio in Toronto.

Santa Maria di Salute, Venice

A view across the quay and the loitering gondolas at the vast baroque church of Salute. It's the kind of view that's been done a thousand times but remains irresistible.

It's an etching, about 4" by 6," printed at the Open Studio in Toronto, Ontario. The uniform blue was applied with a technique called chine collé, in which a layer of tissue-thin tinted paper is laid down between the etching plate and the support paper.

Santa Maria degli Angeli

One of a series of very small etchings, based on quick sketches I made while cycling in Europe. This image is about an inch tall.

I sketched out this view while on the  (very short) ride between Perugia and Assisi, of Saint Francis fame. The church you can see is Santa Maria degli Angeli, a huge late Renaissance pile that contains within it the tiny church which sheltered Saint Francis in the early days of the Franciscan order.

The image is an etching, which is a form of hand printmaking in which acid is used to burn a drawing into a metal plate, which is then inked and transferred to paper using a hand-cranked press. It's a tricky process, but has the virtue of producing multiple original works. This one is number five in a final set of fifty.

Woman with a knee brace

A rather sparse composition from a few years ago. The processes of physical injury and recovery can be visually fascinating, perhaps because of the asymmetry they often force on the body. The human form is resonant in our visual part of our brains; it is the easiest shape for us to pick out in any environment, which is why camouflage works not, as is often thought, by blending into the background, but rather by breaking up the recognizable outline.

I wanted the design of this image to reflect the asymmetry of the injury, as well as its arbitrariness. Perhaps it would have been better if I chopped off the leg altogether, but that was not the state of the model. Nor, of course, would I wish it upon her.

It's an etching on zinc, printed at the Open Studio in Toronto.

Montaubon

Some years ago I visited the small, russet-coloured town of Montaubon. My objective there was to visit the Jean-Dominique Ingres museum. It was a disappointment. Its contents - donated by his widow to his hometown - consist of the leavings of his studio and various other bits and pieces he was unable to sell.

None, in short, of the fabulous portrait drawings that make up his most interesting body of work. Nor any of the great paintings either.

But the trip was not a waste. Just a bit north of Toulouse, Montaubon is likewise built entirely from the pinkish-red local brick, and is quite beautiful. My favourite spot was the place de ville, a square courtyard completely enclosed by a double arcade that lent it a homey, almost claustrophobic, appeal.

A good place to hide from the afternoon sun, and one in which people were constantly appearing and disappearing, as if by magic, behind the many columns.

I made this etching of it at the Open Studio in Toronto. It's approximately nine by six inches, and printed on 140lb. Somerset cotton-rag paper, in an edition of forty. My main interest in the composition was in capturing the sharpness of the afternoon sun.

Il castello di Frosini

A very small etching that I recently made at the Open Studio in Toronto. It's just over an inch tall.

There's a certain pleasure in miniaturization. I've always wondered if it's the same enjoyment we take in high-density imagery, such as Russian icons or paintings by Gustav Klimt - the sense of too much information crammed into too little space can be very enticing.

In any case, I starting making the tiny landscapes because there's often no time for a larger drawing, especially when you're cycling across Tuscany.

This scene is of the castle and small hamlet of Frosini (population: 45) in the Province of Siena. It rests on the flank of the low mountains dividing two fertile river valleys. The road in the picture has, with various pavements, served as Siena's main link to the sea for over a thousand years. In short, exactly where you would expect to find a castle, and indeed, it first appears in history in an 11th century document.

A century or so later it belonged to the Knights Templar, and then to the city of Siena. These days, it's privately owned. I'd love to see the inside of the castle.

Saint Croix

Another church, this time in France. It's the ancient parish church of the town of Montrichard, a romanesque structure tucked under the towering castle erected by Foulques Nerra, the Black Falcon, a man so entertainingly evil he deserves his own novel (or two) plus a mini-series. The castle is 11th century, and no doubt the original church was too, but what you see in the picture probably dates from a century later.

It got its name (Église Ste-Croix) from a fragment of the true cross brought back from Jerusalem by Foulques Nerra, on one of his three pilgrimages to the city. He had a lot of repenting to do.


The picture is one of the first etchings I ever made, back in 2001 at the Ontario College of Art and Design. It's quite small, about four by six inches.

The orchard at Settignano

Settignano is a village just north-east of Florence, famous for the villa I Tatti - once the home of Bernard Berenson and now Harvard's centre for renaissance studies - and also for quarries. The villa is visible in another small etching, here.

The orchard in this picture is down the hill from the village proper. And I was walking, for a change, not cycling.

This is a tiny etching - the image is only about an inch tall.

Tavernelle Val di Pesa

Tavernelle is a dainty town in, as the name implies, the valley of the river Pesa in central Tuscany. It's a few hours bike ride south of Florence, and about two minutes from Barbarino Val d'Elsa, which is in the next river valley over. I fell in with an elderly German tourist there, who was cycling the length of Italy. Excellent stamina for a septuagenarian.

The image is a tiny etching, about an inch tall, overlaid with tinted Japanese paper. It's based on the sketch I made from my bicycle. There are so many landscapes to sketch, sometimes its easier not to dismount.

fun in the sun

An etching made to commemorate a trip to Toronto Island. This is among the first etchings I ever made, back in 2002.

The Canal of Giudecca

as seen from a window of the Doge's Palace.

It's an etching on zinc, printed on hand-coloured Japanese tissue on a support of rag-cotton European paper.

Camposanto

The ancient graveyard in Pisa in the aftermath of a storm that left the marble shiny and mirror-like.

The storm has pulled away to the west, leaving a typically incandescent Tuscan sun to cut the architecture into high relief. Visible over the southern roof of the graveyard is the duomo and part of the upper register of the leaning tower.

It's an etching on zinc. The textures are aquatint, but the colours are watercolour applied after pulling the proof.

The castle at Murlo

A tiny etching of the castle at Murlo - a dainty Tuscan village a short way south of Siena. I didn't stop to visit: this is the view from the road, and I still had a fair way to cycle on that day.

Blois

Looking up at the Cathedral of St.Louis in Blois, France. The cathedral, a 17th century building graced with charming modernist stained glass, is not the most interesting or impressive sight in Blois. But the confined view up the hillside stairway is one of the most striking.

Alfred Krupp's Last Day

An etching inspired by a story I heard about a former inhabitant of Capri:

At the beginning of the 20th century, Alfred Krupp's life of untrammelled indolence and wealth was marred only by the fact that everything about his love life was illegal in his native Germany. So like many before him, he took off for Italy, and led an idyllic life on Capri.

But he overestimated the liberality of his hosts, and when some Neapolitan reporters got wind of his close relationship with a local fishing boy, Alfred Krupp found himself faced with the threat of blackmail.

Animated, perhaps, by the ghost of the Duke of Wellington, he told them "Publish and be damned!" They did, and he was.

Insinuations in private are one thing, open publications another. In a single day, the world turned black around him. Shortly afterwards he committed suicide.

This is the second version of the etching. A third is underway.

Pont Saint-Bénezet

The famous bridge at Avignon, sketched very rapidly from the city walls.

I redid my sketch directly on the etching plate, with the result that the image is mirrored; the chapel is in reality on the right-hand (upstream) side of the bridge. It's a very small etching, about an inch and a quarter tall.

Il Molo

The view from the Molo - the quay at San Marco's opening onto the mouth of the Grand Canal - across to Santa Maria della Salute.

It is, of course, impossible to make etchings of Venetian subjects without evoking Whistler. But where his etchings were animated with a fairy-like lightness of touch, here I was aiming for a heavy, almost claustrophobic atmosphere.

I chopped off the top of Salute and reduced its gleaming marble to a slab of grey. The unified colour tone is achieved with a technique called chine colle; during the printing process, a layer of hand-tinted Japanese tissue lies between the plate and the heavier European paper. The pressure of the press impresses the image through the tissue onto the heavier sheet.

Street Show

The apartment was sweltering, the air dripping. Even the floor did not want to be touched.
Outside, it crackled, like cereal or strings of light bulbs in movies made in the '80s. Something was happening, but it was too dark outside, too bright inside, and she did not want to turn off the light.