Artwork description:

This is a drypoint etching. Drypoint is a printmaking technique of the intaglio family, in which an image is incised into a plate with a hard-pointed "needle" of sharp metal or diamond point. In principle, the method is practically identical to engraving. The difference is in the use of tools, and that the raised ridge along the furrow is not scraped or filed away as in engraving. Traditionally the plate was copper, but I used plexiglass. This is a one of a kind 'artist's proof'.

This is a study and practice drawing for an oil painting composition in my 'Odalisque series'. In this body of work I am interested in the commonalities and the contrasts that compare the female figure to the coastal hills where I live. Similarities between the two are how the lines rhyme in ways that are a sublime invitation to the imagination, and how the fire adapted, San Francisco Bay Area landscape of renewal compares naturally to a Mother Nature figure. Differences that I think about are how the fragility of flesh contrasts starkly next to rocky volcanic land and sun parched vegetation of twisted manzanita, ticks and poison oak. I also notice our ephemeral inevitability. She is poised next to the old-as-the-hills existential element of time.

Master of Visual Art Degree - MFA, Maryland Institute, Mt. Royal School of Painting.
Bachelor Arts Degree – BA, University of California, Davis

Primary Influences: Wayne Thiebaud, who taught me how to oil paint at UC Davis; Renaissance; Raphael drawings; Post-Impressionists, Matisse &; Van Gogh; Abstract Expressionists, Willem de Kooning & Cy Twombly; Neo-Expressionist, Anselm Kiefer; Currently I am not relating to Post-Modernism’s irony and I am exploring Meta-modern earnestness. I am interested in meaningfulness and not the ubiquitous decorative painting that is primarily meant to enhance the space it’s in.

Darren Jekel is married and fathers two daughters in northern California’s wine growing region.

Materials used:

ink

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