The Artist's Tools

I hadn't planned to make this piece.

It was a Tuesday morning — early, before the real work started — and I was cleaning the studio. Collecting brushes, straightening pencils, moving things back to where they lived. I set a group of them down on the windowsill to dry and the light caught them.

I stood there for a long time. There was something unbearably honest about these objects. They had been everywhere these things had been. They carried the history of every piece I'd ever made. They were more faithful witnesses to this work than I had been.

A still life is always a portrait.

The artist can't help it — the objects you choose to paint tell the viewer exactly who you are, what you value, how you see. A Dutch master paints the abundance of empire and the inevitability of decay. I was painting the tools of a practice, and that meant painting the practice itself.

I arranged them carefully. Not artificially — I wanted the arrangement to look accidental, to look like I'd just set them down. That kind of studied naturalness takes a long time to get right. The drawing alone took most of an afternoon.

Making a fine art print imposes its own ceremonies.

The paper must be right — weight, tooth, pH. The plate must be prepared and inked with the same attention every time, or the variations show. The press must be set with precision. And then there is the moment of reveal: the paper lifted from the plate, the image appearing as it pulls away.

Every print in an edition is the same — and completely individual. The pressure varied slightly, the ink caught differently in different places. I kept ten from this run. They are identical in every measurable way and none of them are the same.