Alan Petrulis - Night Tracings Etchings

LINES

I fell in love with intaglio before I ever picked up an etcher’s needle. From the first moment a fellow student showed me a freshly pulled print I knew this was something I had to do. The etching’s surface was unbelievably rich, the explanation of how it was made was pure magic. How could I resist? While I studied many printmaking techniques by the time I left graduate school in 1979; it was clear that my passion lay in line etching. My early work was largely experimental, resulting in many one-of-a-kind hand-colored prints. The unique quality of etched lines has always been more important to me than the possibility of producing multiples. When the landscape became my most common subject, my interest in it lied less in rendering than it did in storytelling. Questions are not problems, even when raised, they do not always necessitate answers. Working with open-ended questions became an essential element of my work. At first, I did not realize that by creating uncertainty I was offering an invitation to an inward gaze. Only later did I come to realize that what really interested me was the idea of using the landscape around me as metaphor to represent the hidden landscape of the mind. While great potential lie in this idea, exploration abruptly ended when I lost access to my printshop. Afterwards, I refocused my artistic efforts on photography.

I did not pick up the needle again until 1992 when I began supplying New England galleries with etchings of local scenery. Within a few years I walked over a thousand miles of coastline, collecting imagery and connecting with galleries stretching from Mystic, Connecticut to Bar Harbor, Maine. If the constraints of working within a business model did not encourage experimentation, years of continual focus allowed me to hone my observational skills and improve my drawing. The heavily etched lines that once defined my early work evolved into softer and more subtle tones. If this work was designed to attract a specific audience, I still tried to avoid the conventional. I approached the familiar in unfamiliar ways. I continually explored the boundaries of the acceptable, searching for new ways to define beauty. The one thing I never lost sight of over these years was my desire to capture a true sense of place. This long engagement with the places I walked created a greater intimacy between us, an intimacy that enhanced my ability to see more deeply into it and into myself.

What made my New England series possible was attaining a new studio at the SOHO Etching Workshop. I was working there when a New York venue, The Old Printshop began exhibiting my etchings in 1997. While my arrangements with New England galleries continued, my focus began to shift toward creating cityscapes. I spent seventeen years in SOHO, translating my photographs into etchings until the sale of the building led to my eviction. This crisis finally forced me to confront my living arrangements. Though residing in the same place for years, I did so as a transient, never mentally settling in, constantly anticipating a move that never came. Walking the city, hunting for compositions changed that. The deep seeing required to put the city on film also put it inside me. Once able to admit New York was my home, I began renovations on my house. I have been working out of the small printshop set up there since 2012.

Although my home studio allowed me to continue working through the years of Covid, the pandemic hit me harder than I thought it would. While initially upset over the closing of shows and galleries, a deeper melancholy set in when I sensed there was no place for me in the new world that was emerging. All I had worked for was for nothing. Though a recipe for depression, I found it to have a strangely liberating effect. Divorced from the art world I knew, I recommitted myself to producing quality work based solely on my compulsion to make it. The desire to please vanished with my audience. While my approach to the landscape as metaphor never completely vanished, I began addressing this concept with renewed rigor. This approach continues unabated despite the reemerging art scene. I am more confident in its validity than ever before. Those who say our ancient ancestors entered caves to depict scenes of hunting get it wrong. There is one continuous line, drawn before recorded time that stretches from the deepest recesses of the earth to my etching plate. This is the hunt.

The links below lead to two separate portfolios, one for my New York prints and the other for a selection of New England prints. Each link contains multiple pages with work displayed in chronological order. All prints are made solely through line etching unless otherwise noted.

	New York
	New England

HOW MY ETCHINGS ARE MADE

When etching was first explained to me, it immediately brought up associations with Alchemy even though I only had a vague understanding of what that was. It took years of practicing etching and years of living before I was able to truly comprehend the connection. In the Alchemist cosmology, the earth was once ruled by Light and Darkness. When more flocked to Light, Dark grew envious and initiated a war. Unable to engage in what war requires, Light created the Anthropos, a human prototype to defend itself. Light failed to prevail in this conflict and the Anthropos was destroyed, shattered into a million pieces, and scattered across the universe. Ever since, mankind has lived under the reign of Darkness. Alchemists see it their purpose to extricate these divine fragments of Light hidden within the ordinary so mankind can be fully redeemed. Their method begins with a sacrifice, bones are extracted, chard and burnt. Burning is the only way to free its life force and render the Lumen Naturae locked within pliable. This material is ground down, mixed with oil, and ground some more. The result is Nigredo, a primal form of matter without form or meaning. This form of death is only considered an interim state, the first step of transmutation and resurrection. I circumvent this part by simply purchasing charred bones in the form of etching ink from an art store. This is not to say I am indifferent to how this point is reached, which is why I described it here. Too many printmakers today only view the etching process through its mechanical aspects. This is like pulling a can of tuna off a grocery shelf and never realizing its contents were once a living fish. Alchemy is now largely expressed in two ways; its practical side, which has become chemistry, and its esoteric side, which shows up as depth psychology. True Alchemy however does not have two halves. Chemistry was employed as a profane metaphor to access the unconscious mind, to bring out that kept hidden and make a person whole. In doing so, the creative spirit is not only released, we come to see ourselves through it. Although all forms of art incorporate some aspects of this practice, whether knowingly or not, I believe the etching process comes closest to pure alchemy.

Once ink is obtained, it must be molded and given form through the creation of a matrix. Several different base metals can be used as the substrate for etching. Each has its own characteristics in how it can be worked and how it reacts to acid, which in turn determines the look of the line produced. Copper plates have always been the most widely used, though I use zinc. At its core, etching is a transformative process powered by the unleashing of a chemical reaction. Acid is harnessed to remove specific areas of a metal substrate through the application and manipulation of an acid resist. Metal smiths began using this process in the Middle-ages to decorate armor, often recording their designs by rubbing charcoal into etched lines before transferring them to damp pieces of cloth. Innovation, however rarely springs forth in isolation and etched prints do not appear until the sixteenth century, a time when Alchemy flourished and knowledge into the use of acids became widespread. This was also a time when suitable paper and ink for printing became widely available. It took another century of refinements before etching was perfected and taken up by artists in number. The technique has changed little since.

To control where the acid will bite the metal, the plate is first coated with an acid resistant varnish called a ground. While grounds have no set ingredients, they commonly use bees wax for pliability, rosin for hardness, and asphaltum for durability. The quality of the ground used affects the quality of the drawing. If the ground is dried into a ball, it can be melted onto the substrate and then evened out with a leather brayer. Most modern grounds, like the ones I use come suspended in solvent and are applied with a brush. Once dry, the plate can be drawn upon with a metal stylus. Both etching and engraving are defined as intaglio techniques, meaning to Incise. In engraving, a specialized tool is used to directly gouge lines out from a plate’s surface without the need for an acid bite. This technique is very different from drawing and requires a skill that is not easy to master. While engraving came to dominate reproductive work, many artists began looking at etching to free their hands from such calculated labor. Since acid is used to incise etched lines, only enough pressure to expose the metal lying under the ground need be applied. This allows artists to draw their lines in a more familiar and comfortable manner.

Etching needles come in a variety styles, but their one common feature is that they have sharp metal points. While I hold my stylus as I would a pencil, this medium creates restrictions on how I can draw. I cannot impart tone with pressure for there is no transfer of pigment and no give to the hard metal surface. All drawn lines look identical since the stylus only needs to expose metal for the acid to bite. The weight of a line is solely determined by the length of time it spends in the acid. The longer its exposure, the more metal will dissolve and evaporate into a gas. The deeper the line, the more ink it will hold, and the darker it will print. I must also avoid exposing broad areas of metal for these will not properly hold ink. To create tonal fields, parallel lines must be laid down. To even out or soften tone, more lines must be crosshatched over the first set to create optical blending.

When my drawing is finished, the zinc plate is placed in a bath of diluted nitric acid, which only dissolves the metal where it has been exposed. To vary the darkness of lines on a single plate, a stop out varnish is sometimes used to seal off lines at various points of being bitten. The typical method is to complete the drawing and then remove the plate from the acid bath once the lightest tonality is etched. All areas to retain this value are then covered with varnish and the plate is etched again until the next tonality is reached. I use an alternative method in which each tonality is drawn separately. Darks are put in first and then partially etched. This is followed by the drawing of middle tones, which are also partially etched. This goes on until the lightest values are completely etched, which should coincide with the depth for the darkest values finally being reached. Most of my plates are placed in acid at least fifteen times using this method. No stop out varnish is required but the number of tonal séparations and their time in the acid must be calculated before I begin to draw. The advantage of working this way is that lines of different weights can be more easily dispersed, creating greater tonal range and subtle transitions. The obvious disadvantage is that there is much more room for error. It is like writing a paragraph with a pen in each hand, one starting at the beginning and the other from its end in anticipation of articulating a complete idea when they meet up in the middle. Etching is not a forgiving medium; not all mistakes can be corrected.

When all desired lines are etched into the plate, the ground is washed off and it is ready for printing. A pasty ink, a bit thicker than oil paint, is then spread over the entire surface of the matrix and rubbed into its lines. When all recesses are filled, the excess ink is carefully removed in stages, aggressive wiping to start leading to more gentile whisking. The idea is to clean ink from the plate’s smooth surface so it will not print while pulling as little ink as possible out from lines that are meant to print. I do my wiping with tarlatan, a product similar to cheesecloth, only starched so ink will only be scoop up in the space between its fibers and not be overly absorbed into them. It is nearly impossible to wipe all the ink from a plate’s surface. That left behind on non-etched areas is referred to as plate-tone. Some presence is usually preferable since it helps to soften the image, making it more palatable to the eye. Since the inking process is performed entirely by hand, each print will inevitably contain slight variations even when efforts to obtain consistency are made.

Printing utilizes an etching press, a variation of the rolling press originally designed to produce sheet metal like my substrate. It consists of a thick metal bed sandwiched between two heavy metal rollers. The top roller is suspended on a spring mechanism so the pressure it applies can be adjusted. A crank box or wheel turns the roller. After the plate is placed on the press bed, a sheet of paper is placed over it. Most printing papers must be soaked beforehand so they can stretch under the great pressure these presses apply. The paper is then topped with felt and woolen blankets to both protect the paper and help force it into the etched lines. As this combination passes under the roller, the plate releases ink and it is transferred to the paper‚’s fibers. The plate must then be re-inked and re-wiped for every additional print desired. Lines printed through intaglio are unlike those produced by any other printing medium. They create a topography of rolling hills and valleys, whose relief catches light in very subtle but ever changing ways.

It has been said that etching can be taught in a single morning but the practice takes a lifetime to perfect. Understanding its mechanics is the easy part, being able to apply this very abstract way of working to making art goes against what most are comfortable with. To become a good etcher, one must learn to embrace the countless subtleties encountered while working. Perhaps the most important lesson is in learning to see that there is more here than creating a print. No one need embrace the concepts I present here to make an etching, but art is always better when artists can better look into themselves.