E.058 Arthurs Creek 1991–92; reworked and retitled 2014; reworked 2018

• I. 1st state of 6, 1991

  

  Drypoint. A view across rolling farmland with trees, towards a prominent mountain that occupies the upper centre of the plate. The sky is rendered with oblique angular strokes of drypoint, in patches that vary in direction.

  Impression on wove Hahnemühle paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Dunmoochin studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘1 [circled]’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor 91’.

• II. 2nd state of 6, 1991

  

  More drypoint has been added to the trees, the sky and the mountain.

  Impression with rich burr, on wove Hahnemühle paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Dunmoochin studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘2 [circled]’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor ’91’.

• III. 3rd state of 6, 1991

  Further drypoint has been added to the sky, which is now an inky black with light clouds. There are three variant impressions of this state.

  1. Impression with rich burr and light plate tone, on wove Hahnemühle paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Dunmoochin studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘3 [circled]’; lower centre: ‘Arthurs Creek’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor ’91’.
  2. Impression with plate tone but with the burr wiped more cleanly, on wove Hahnemühle paper with watermark, printed by Rick Amor in his Dunmoochin studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘4 [circled]’; lower centre: ‘Arthurs Creek’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor ’91’. Although inscribed ‘4’, this is an impression of the third state.
  3. Cleanly wiped impression with light burr, on wove Hahnemühle paper with watermark, printed by Rick Amor in his Dunmoochin studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘5 [circled]’; lower centre: ‘Arthurs Creek’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor 91’. Although inscribed ‘5’, this is an impression of the third state.

• III.a. 3rd state of 6, 1991

  

  Further drypoint has been added to the sky, which is now an inky black with light clouds. There are three variant impressions of this state.

• III.c. 3rd state of 6, 1991

  

  Further drypoint has been added to the sky, which is now an inky black with light clouds. There are three variant impressions of this state.

• IV. 4th state of 6, 1992

  The drypoint in the sky and on the mountain has been burnished back.

  Impression on wove Moulin du Gué paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Dunmoochin studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘6 [circled]’; lower centre: ‘Arthurs Ck’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor ’92’. Although inscribed ‘6’, this is the fourth state.

• V. 5th state of 6, 1992

  Drypoint lines and accents have been added to the sky. There are two variant impressions of this state.

  1. Impression on wove paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Dunmoochin studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘7 [circled]’; lower centre: ‘Arthurs Ck’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor ’92’. Although inscribed ‘7’, this is an impression of the fifth state.
  2. Impression with rich burr, on wove paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Dunmoochin studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘8 [circled]’; lower centre: ‘Arthurs Ck’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor ’92’. Although inscribed ‘8’, this is an impression of the fifth state.

• V.b. 5th state of 6, 1992

  

  Drypoint lines and accents have been added to the sky. There are two variant impressions of this state.

• First edition, 1992

  Edition of ten numbered impressions, on wove Arches paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Dunmoochin studio. The edition included a bon à tirer impression and two artist’s proofs (AP I and AP II). Each impression is inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left ‘[status of impression]’ [or] ‘[1 through 10]/10’; lower centre: ‘Arthurs Ck’; lower right: signed and dated ‘Rick Amor ’92’.

   

  Edition sheet size: 382 x 422 mm

• Edition impression (first edition, 1992, as Arthurs Creek) (Featured Image)

  

• VI. 6th state, 2014, as Strathewen

  The work has been retitled Strathewen. The plate has been selectively burnished, although scratches and foul biting that had inadvertently accumulated while the matrix was in storage, after the printing of the first edition, have been allowed to remain, in order to provide a sense of grittiness and texture. The general disposition of the vegetation has been retained but the outline of the mountain has been changed, trees have been added, and new drypoint has been applied extensively, across the composition. The small vertical lines on the left side of the mountain indicate bare trees. There are two variant impressions of this state.

  1. Impression with rich burr, on wove Somerset paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘1-1’; lower centre: ‘Strathewen’; lower right: signed and dated ‘R Amor ’14’.
  2. Cleanly wiped impression on wove Somerset paper, printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘2-1’; lower centre: ‘Strathewen’; lower right: signed and dated ‘R Amor ’14’.

• Second edition, 2014, as Strathewen

  Edition of ten numbered impressions, on wove Somerset paper, printed by Rosalind Atkins at Kate Herd’s studio, Alphington. The edition included a bon à tirer impression and an artist’s proof. Each impression is inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘[status of impression]’ [or] ‘[1 through 10]/10’; lower centre: ‘Strathewen’; lower right: signed and dated ‘R Amor ’14’.

• Edition impression (second edition, 2014), as Strathewen

  

  The work has been retitled Strathewen. The plate has been selectively burnished, although scratches and foul biting that had inadvertently accumulated while the matrix was in storage, after the printing of the first edition, have been allowed to remain, in order to provide a sense of grittiness and texture. The general disposition of the vegetation has been retained but the outline of the mountain has been changed, trees have been added, and new drypoint has been applied extensively, across the composition. The small vertical lines on the left side of the mountain indicate bare trees.

• VII. 7th and final state, 2018, as Strathewen

  

  Except for the short tree in the very foreground of the image centre right, every other tree and bush has been burnished to remove burr and reduce the intensity of the black. The central mountain was altered from a rich web of cross-hatching to a more subdued, indistinct mass of marks. In particular, the dark black patch that had been prominent on the peak of the central mountain has been removed. The mountain in the distance, to the right of the central mountain, has also been burnished so that it is now very pale. In the mid-ground, on the rising hill to the right of the print, the texture of the grasses and the shadows cast by the trees have been softened, as has the shadows cast by every tree and bush in the foreground. Amor has chosen to keep the incidental scratches and foul biting that exists in earlier states. The undulating, horizontal marks that make up the atmospheric sky also remain largely unchanged from the last state.

• Third edition, 2018, as Strathewen

  Edition of four numbered impressions, on wove paper, printed by Rosalind Atkins at Kate Herd’s studio, Alphington, January 2020. The edition includes three artist’s proofs an hors commerce impression. Each impression is inscribed in pencil, below the plate mark: lower left: ‘[status of impression]’ [or] ‘[1 through 4]/4’; lower centre: ‘Strathewen’; lower right: signed and dated ‘R. Amor 18’.

   

  Edition sheet size: 380 x 472 mm

• Edition impression (third edition, 2018), with plate-tone, as Strathewen

  

• Comment

  Arthurs Creek is a township some thirty-five kilometres north-west of Melbourne. Like nearby Strathewen, it is in the vicinity of Kinglake National Park and Mount Sugarloaf, which is depicted in this print. Once a horticultural and grazing settlement, Arthurs Creek is now occupied mostly by small country properties, vineyards and orchards. The view shown in this drypoint is from Arthurs Creek Primary School, Arthurs Creek Road East, looking towards the north-east. The landscape is, however, reversed.

  During the 1980s and early 1990s, Amor lived at nearby Cottles Bridge and he occasionally painted and drew the surrounding landscape. The earliest version of the view seen in the present drypoint is a small oil, Arthurs Creek, painted in the spring of 1988 (Art Gallery of Ballarat); however, the most important of the earlier depictions is the painting Summer at Strathewen, 1991, on which the drypoint is based (Fry 2008).

  In February 2009, on the day now referred to as Black Saturday, the Arthurs Creek and Strathewen area was devastated by bushfires, in which many lives were lost and whole townships destroyed, among them Strathewen.

  In 2012, Amor returned to the area to see how it looked in the aftermath of the fires, and he decided to rework his drypoint Arthurs Creek, made over twenty years earlier. Although the image that is captured in the 2014 version of the drypoint, now retitled Strathewen, dates from five years after the Black Saturday fires, their effects on the vegetation is clearly evoked in the scarring and scuffing of the copper plate, and the stick-like cover of trees burnt bare on the mountain.

  In 2018, the artist reworked the plate by significantly burnishing back almost every feature in the landscape. The once rich blacks of the 2014 version have been subdued and a new softness is present in the seventh state. The artist notes that the 2018 was not an overt response to the Black Saturday bushfires (and any subsequent regrowth). Amor has a long relationship with this area. Over the last thirty years Amor has used the same plate to reflect his changing view of Strathewen landscape.

  The verso of the copper plate used for E.058 was later used for the drypoint Passage, 1993, reworked 1997 (cat. no. E.073).