The Sahara (based on a photograph by Ansel Adams)

Holly Downing

Holly Downing uses her preferred medium of mezzotint to enable this composition to emerge from the black, the sand dunes of the Saharan desert, lit by moonlight. The shapes are ethereal, like moving drapery, and what lies beyond them is a mystery.

Downing comments on her website: "Mezzotint is a form of engraving, whose subtle qualities are achieved with tone rather than line. The artist spends many hours “rocking” a copper plate until the plate has thousands of tiny holes, each with a bit of raised burr that hold a tremendous amount of ink. A fully rocked plate prints a lush, velvety black, unparalleled in any other medium. To obtain an image, the artist scrapes the surface of the plate, variously lowering the levels of the burrs so they will hold less ink and thereby yield gradations of dark and light. Gradually an image emerges out of the darkness. The plate is inked by hand and printed on an etching press."

Between the years 1974 and 1980, Holly Downing resided in England where she researched the mezzotint technique earning her M.F.A. from Goddard College in 1980. Downing taught art for twenty-three years at the Santa Rosa Junior College and prior to that she taught briefly at the University of California at Santa Cruz and San Francisco State University.