Mezzotint. Landscape with a low horizon and vegetation in the distance, with a square pillar at left and a cypress at right. The ground is streaked with white areas that act as marks of perspectival recession, while also suggesting a muddy road. The vast sky is filled with huge clouds.
Further burnishing in the clouds has sharpened the contrast between light and dark, thereby giving the clouds greater presence. The streakiness of the half lights on the ground in the lower right corner has been smoothed out.
- Catalogue Number
- E.130
- Title and Date
- Cloud 2004
- Description of Featured Image
- Landscape with a low horizon and vegetation in the distance, with a square pillar at left and a cypress at right. The ground is streaked with white areas that act as marks of perspectival recession, while also suggesting a muddy road. The vast sky is filled with huge clouds.
- Where Made
- Alphington, Melbourne
- Medium Category and Technique
- Intaglio Print: Mezzotint on copper
- Support
- Wove paper. Identified papers: BFK Rives paper with watermark: ‘BFK RIVES / FRANCE’ with infinity symbol; Velin Arches paper.
- Dimensions
-
Image size: 89 x 113 mm
Matrix size: 89 x 114 mm - Artist’s Record Number
- RAE.155
- Printer(s) and Workshop(s)
- All state impressions printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio. Edition printed by Rosalind Atkins at the Australian Print Workshop, Fitzroy (Melbourne).
- Summary Edition Information
- Three states. Edition of ten numbered impressions, 2005.
- Literature
- For an illustration of the watercolour The cloud, 2011, see Liverpool Street Gallery, Rick Amor – Watercolours and Paintings 2011 (exh. cat.), Liverpool Street Gallery, Sydney (in association with Niagara Galleries, Richmond, Victoria), 2011, cat. no. 4.
- Collections
- State Library of Victoria, Melbourne: five state impressions, numbered 1-1 through 1-4, 2-3, all dated 2004; ed. 2/10, dated 2005.
- National Gallery of Australia, Canberra: ed. 1/10, dated 2005 (2007.615).
- Comment
This mezzotint was made shortly after Amor had been diagnosed with Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS), in February–March 2004, and is based on an oil painting by the artist. The cloud in the landscape is of a type often found in Amor’s art: a product of nature, but one that has the uncanny appearance of something with a life of its own – not simply a phenomenon resulting from atmospheric processes.
Having taken the mezzotint to completion, through three (possibly four) states, Amor did not immediately edition it. The edition was printed in September 2005, after his successful bone marrow transplant in June of that year. At this stage the artist changed the title of the print, from Desolate place to Cloud. The old title was not entirely discarded but was used for the lithograph Desolate place, 2004, a work depicting an entirely different motif.
In 2011 Amor returned to this subject in a watercolour, but reversed the composition (Liverpool Street Gallery 2011).
- Keywords
- Clouds, Landscape
- URL
- https://catalogue.rickamor.com.au/works/intaglio/cloud-desolate-place/
Record last updated 16/02/2021