[Visual Description: A male figure on a sailboat dangling a toddler by their foot. Ominous skies and a horizon line in the background]
This print is part of Ken Currie's Indigo Series: An Turas/The Crossing.
"There is a strong relationship between these new prints and my paintings in the recent exhibitions An Turas/The Crossing, in London and Stornoway. They were in fact in close dialogue most of the time. Particular surface textures I wanted in the paintings were closely informed by surface textures in the etchings and vice versa, as was the choice to print in an indigo that echoes the palette of the paintings. Spit bite aquatint feels very close to painting sometimes and in fact a water soluble but oil-based pigment was used in both the paintings and as a stop out on the etching plates, lending a particular contingent fluidity to both.
Another critical feature in the etchings is the use of the reverse of plates already used - a common practice, especially at GPS. The straw hat varnish on the reverse of the plate is spontaneously abraded during its natural handling, exposing the metal underneath, which is then etched. This can produce some intriguing marks upon which to overlay a new etching.
I have been pursuing the notion of the distressed image. Distressed in the sense of weathering or ageing and but also distressed in the sense of images that unsettle. I wanted both the paintings and the etchings to look as though they had been exposed to the elements, particularly the sea, with random surface qualities suggesting salt deposits and the excretia of sea birds. This seemed to resonate with the imagery that was rooted in my recent experiences in the North Atlantic islands of the Hebrides where the sea has been deeply embedded existentially in the lives of generations of people."
Ken Currie, 2025.
