Flat Studies

West Pierce at Marconi

         These are various kinds of inherently flat subjects with textural information that barely leaves the plane of the surface.  These planar surfaces can be:

• asphalt into which vehicular traffic has embedded objects which, if not initially flat, soon become so
• beach sand in which the erosive polishing action of the wind acts to flatten any projection
• watercourse mud banks in which shore birds have left their tracks or aquatic insects have left a different variety of squiggley traces
• wall surfaces which have begun to erode, thus revealing underlying human efforts to modify them.

As a printmaker, I look at these "Flat Studies" and think that I would like to print them. If they could be cut from their matrix and inked with printmaking inks, they would make excellent collagaphs.

West Pierce at Marconi