Aurum Arborealis
£299.00
For several years I've been making a print to celebrate the winter solstice, each time using gold powder from Cornelisson & Son in London. This year's print shows a strange woodland. Someone is in the woods but I don't know who. Or what. In certain lights it's almost impossible to see this figure, this shape. There is something unsettling about being in a woodland or a forest. Sound take on new meanings; shapes, glimpsed in the mist, can become unearthly or even menacing. Is there nothing, really, to fear? There are eleven layers that make up this print; five layers of black and six of gold powder that has been mixed with varnish. As a sort of perverse homage to the fact that the gold used is 24ct the edition is only 24 prints (actually, it's classed as 23.5ct!). And due to the seemingly inexorable rise of the price of gold, this year each print is £299. Each print has hand-torn edges, and is signed, numbered, and embossed with the Slowly Downward manufactory stamp.
Nb. I don't know why there is a figure in the distance; I don't know why I did it, I don't know what it represents; at least, not consciously. I did honestly consider making this picture with no figure in the background. But I could not help myself. If it's any 'consolation', earlier versions of this picture had a much more terrible form lurking in the shadows.
It is sized approximately 145mm x 115mm, and the paper is hand-torn to approximately 250mm x 220mm..
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