Essences

Stephen Black’s exhibition presents a retrospective of his work as a printmaker between the 1990’s to 2025. Over that time he has explored a range of thematic images and printmaking processes. His love of drawing is evident in the studies of fruits and vegetables that take on anthropomorphic character.

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He sometimes juxtaposes recognizable subject matter with inscrutable texts, or copies of beautiful handwritten calligraphy, or references from the history of printing. His printmaking processes include wood block printing, various methods of etching on metal, engraving, and lithography. What makes this work, especially the later work, interesting is a tension between the privacy of the images and what the viewer can perceive.