
Drypoint has been added to the hair, the left side of the face, and the jacket.
Drypoint, including a strong vertical line to the right of the head, has been added to the background. More drypoint modelling has been added to the face, to the hair at right, and to the jacket; the philtrum is now defined with a drypoint curve. A horizontal line has been added to the bottom of the image. There are four variant impressions of this state.
- Catalogue Number
- E.061
- Title and Date
- AS (Andrew Southall) 1992
- Description of Featured Image
- Head and shoulders portrait of the artist and writer Andrew Southall, wearing a T-shirt and jacket. The background is scored with multidirectional drypoint strokes over a veil of vertical strokes.
- Where Made
- Dunmoochin, Cottles Bridge
- Medium Category and Technique
- Intaglio Print: Drypoint on copper
- Support
- Wove paper. Identified papers: No papers identified.
- Dimensions
-
Image size: 204 x 161 mm
Matrix size: 204 x 161 mm - Artist’s Record Number
- RAE.55
- Printer(s) and Workshop(s)
- All impressions printed by Rick Amor in his Dunmoochin studio, Cottles Bridge.
- Summary Edition Information
- Four states. No edition.
- Exhibitions
- National Portrait Gallery 2014–15: National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, Rick Amor: 21 Portraits, 28 November 2014 – 1 March 2015 [no catalogue]; online documentation: http://www.portrait.gov.au/exhibitions/rick-amor-2014.
- Literature
- Sarah Engledow, ‘Friends and Acquaintances’, Portrait [National Portrait Gallery, Canberra], no. 16, June–August 2005 (online at http://www.portrait.gov.au/magazines/16/friends-and-acquaintances), AP I (illus.).
- Collections
- State Library of Victoria, Melbourne: six state impressions, numbered 1 through 6; AP II.
- National Portrait Gallery, Canberra: AP I (2005.18).
- Comment
Amor made four portrait prints of his friend, the self-taught painter and printmaker Andrew Southall (b. 1947), the first two being woodcuts, executed in 1984 (Andrew Southall painting) and 1986 (Andrew Southall) respectively. This drypoint was the third of the Southall portrait prints, and it was followed, in 1995, by another drypoint, which portrays the subject in a traditional half-length pose (cat. no. E.095). Like the 1995 print, E.061 was done from life and scored with the drypoint needle directly onto the copper plate. It was not commissioned but was made spontaneously, as a portrait of a friend.
Amor and Southall first met in 1981, through a mutual friend, at Realities, a commercial gallery in Toorak (Melbourne), and subsequently often went on drawing and painting expeditions together. They were soon joined by others, and their practice of working outdoors helped revive an enthusiasm for plein-air painting, among a younger generation of artists.
In E.061, Amor makes use of the expressive and suggestive qualities of drypoint, exploiting its capacity to provide the appearance of differing facial expressions, depending on the way the plate is wiped (and therefore depending on the amount of ink left on it). The role that the drypoint burr plays in trapping the ink is an important element in this.
Amor’s intaglio record books indicate that the artist had planned to print an edition of six impressions of this work, but the edition never eventuated.
The verso of the copper plate used for E.061 was subsequently used for the drypoint Sea structure, 1992 (cat. no. E.067).
- Keywords
- Andrew Southall, Portrait
- URL
- https://catalogue.rickamor.com.au/works/intaglio/a-s-andrew-southall/
Record last updated 15/02/2021