Etchings

Colette
(1873-1954)
(real name: Sidonie Gabrielle Colette)

ETCHING with gouache blue eyelids added by the artist's own hand wrapped in prophylactic glove.

Printed at Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen by master interpreteur Michael Waight, to my imprecise specifications.

Size: Image-10"x11.75"(25.50cmx30cm) on 300gms handmade paper 15"x22"(38.50cmsx55.50)

COLETTE. French novelist, friend of artists including Raoul DUFY, Jean COCTEAU, Picasso, and many others, writers and Theatre people of the Paris scene in the first half of the 20th century. Wrote her first four CLAUDINE Novels(1900-1903), the saucy goings-on of a teenage girl, under the pseudonym, 'Willy', the name of her first husband, who, so the story goes, locked her in her room until she had finished them- AND A GOOD THING TOO!!

Then in 1907 she writes as Colette Willy, leaves her unfaithful bastard husband, becomes a Music Hall performer, shows one tit occasionally on stage, and is notoriously known evermore, simply as Colette, a proud statement of her fierce independent spirit. Strongly autobiographical, her books reflect her exclusive feminine sexuality, decadence and classic 'femme fatales' obduracy- a bit of a bitch, by all accounts- but probably something she nurtured during her glorious lesbian years, protected as she was, by 'Missy', niece of Napoleon III, who committed suicide in 1944, rejected, poverty-stricken and in abject despair. There is a hell of a story right there, if you care to dig for it. You know how people talk. Look! Colette was a fabulously colorful creature and I probably haven't done her justice. Not enough pout, probably, as though she needs to be sucking on a lemon or something.

She is known primarily because she is the author of GIGI, which had to be parts of her, and which, established the blockbuster genre of Hollywood Musicals, far more exotically than The Wizard of OZ, but without that particular film's nostalgic naivete. I am certain that naivete is a quality lacking in many of the films that subsequently filled our screens ad nauseum, and still do. GIGI has got to be due for a raunchier re-make, more in character with her creator, more overtly lesbian, more disdainful of the current crop of fabulous male leads, whom she could rubbish one by one, as impotent clones, and each more humiliated than the last, getting her every last drop of her own back on a world of foul men who treated her like shit during her lifetime. I could direct it and film it in the Catacombs of Paris, as a moving Daguerretype — but don't quote me on that. What do I know?

Price: $675.00

CAMP FOLLOWER

Print/etching in and edition of 20. (5 Artist's Proofs)

Printed on German Etch Watermarked handmade paper. Weight 300 gms.

Paper Size: 31"x36" (785mmx915mm)

Image Size:22"x23"(560mmx580mm).

Hand printed at Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen.

This character is a mystery to me. He emerged unbidden from the acid bath and I just hadn't the heart to tell him to go away. Starting at $500, he makes a graceful, if enigmatic entrance; rather like those uninvited guests, who stay for the meal. When the Cognac has been served, the phone rings and it's for him. He disappears and when asked, "Who was that?" the Host replies, "I haven't the slightest idea! More Cognac anybody??"

(Click on the image for a better view of him.)

Price: $500

Anais Nin was a compulsive Diarist. There are Diaries from 1914 onwards, when she was only 11 years old. The main body of her Journals span the years 1931 to 1974 in which she probes the depth of her feminine psyche, her relation to it and its spur for her works of Fiction. She analyses her emotions and her many relationships with such men as Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell and the Psychoanalyst, Otto Rank. 'Henry and June' examines her feelings with frank confessions of her love for Henry Miller and his wife June. Her books include House of Incest, Under a Glass Bell, Ladders to Fire, Delta of Venus, A Spy in the House of Love and Cities of the Interior. She wrote to "taste life twice", as she put it, "once in the moment and once in retrospection". Though born in France to a Danish mother and a Spanish father, she is considered by the French to be an American, since she became an American citizen after seeking refuge there at the start of the First World War. She also wrote her Journals in English and to the xenophobic French therefore, are considered as such, though she spent much of her time living in a house in a suburb of Paris called Louveciennes, her "refuge" and her "Laboratory of the Soul". At present the house is the subject of a legal dispute to save it for the nation, but is threatened with wretched redevelopment of the worst kind.

My print of her, etched in steel, and printed at Peacock Printmakers in Aberdeen, exists in its perfect state, only in an edition of 20 copies, in which I have tried to capture her demure sexuality. I am not always so sensitive! — but she presented me with a rare challenge. Perhaps something of the "Seduction of the Minotaur" possessed me.

Edition of 20. On handmade paper, Watermark French BFK Rives 130 gm weight. The image size is: 14 1/2"x 22 1/4"(365mm x 570mm) on the paper size 22" x 30"(570mm x 760mm)

The etching is available at a price of $650 per print.

Click on the image for a closer inspection of the etching.

Want to learn more about Anais Nin? Click here.

Here is an ETCHING on steel of Georges MELIES, cinematographer, illusionist, creator of most special effects and maker of TRIP TO THE MOON film classic (1902) — 100 years on Anniversary Print.

Size of Image. 8.25"x 11.75" on Hand made paper 14.50"x 21".
Edition: 20. and 5 Artists Proofs

The etching is available at a price of $600 per print.

Click for closer inspection.