Jona8than Green Art and Other Things

“Polaris Destroyed” is a series of prints that will be started during the residency. Consisting of 6 etchings, from small to medium size, and one very large etching of a full plate size or greater. The works are based on the 1871 Polaris Expedition towards the North Pole and the events that befell them.

The intaglio prints will be printed on paper- chine colle - in low edition of seven each. Their creation will consist of many traditional intaglio techniques from drypoint, etching, aquatint and some mezzotint. They will be printed in a limited colour palette, of somber tones. The large print will consist of at least a full plate that will be etched with the plate cut in half. At the moment I am leaning towards zinc due to the low edition.

“Polaris Destroyed” is based on the 1871 Polaris Expedition under the command of the explorer Charles Hall. It is the second part of a body of work of mine which starts with “Polaris Lost”. This second part will be focused on the ship's events after the death of Charles Hall and the lost of crew on a ice floe; specifically on the ship being trapped in ice and the eventual running aground of the ship.

This work will be exploring the notion of the tragedy in Romanticism. It will use image making techniques of the romantic school of art, in particular the Hudson River School and the artist William Bradford. I wish to contrast the ideas of Romanticism against the facts of the narrative and contemporary issues.

Print is to me is not just an way of distributing ideas and mark making, but an approach to art making itself. To paraphrase William Kentridge – substituting printmaking for drawing. "So [printmaking] is a testing of ideas: a slow-motion version of thought...The uncertain and imprecise way of constructing a [print] is sometimes a model of how to construct meaning. What ends in clarity does not begin that way." Print allows me to be intuitive but with a resistance, a resistance from the materials or processes at times, that then affect the piece. The narratives that intrigue me are hardly ever the ones that go straight on course, but rather where problems persist.