I live in a small world of gouache and brush and pen and ink. I'd like to explore the world of multiples - etching and prints.
My aim is increasingly to make my photographs look so much like photographs [rather than paintings, etchings, etc.] that unless one has eyes and sees, they won't be seen - and still everyone will never forget having once looked at them.
I especially remember that on All Souls Day, when so many people wanted new monuments for the graves, our whole family pitched in. I did the lettering on the stones, my brother did the carving, and my sisters put the finishing touches on them, the gold leaf and all that.
I have 17 full-time archivists working for me who put away in books all the diversity of artwork I do, from drawing to etching to monotypes to prints to lithographs.
I don't think there's an illustrator who's as good as a Titian or a Rembrandt... but then, Rembrandt was a bit of an illustrator on the quiet, you know?
Engraving then, is, in brief terms, the Art of Scratch.
I would begin by collecting lithographs and etchings. It's a way of coming in and benefiting from real quality art. Even younger artists make wonderful prints. Prints can become very valuable. That's how I began collecting.
The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.
Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind. You are really etching chemical patterns. In most cases, people get stuck in those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them.
Daggers have such beautiful, functional shapes, and decorating them is an ancient tradition.
When I am in New York, you know, my studio is big, about 20,000 to 25,000 square feet, and I have painting rooms and rooms I do etching in, rooms I do lithographs.
