Botanical Gardens I

Leonard Edmondson

Launching his distinctive style from the abstract surrealism of Paul Klee and the expressionism of Hans Hofmann, Los Angeles artist Leonard Edmondson's aesthetic imagery invokes what he called 'almost remembered' forms, feelings and spaces in his paintings, watercolors, etchings and screenprints.

In his "Botanical Forms" series a three dimensionality is found in raised, spidery shapes fannign out across the chaos. The technique used to acheive this was likely informed by the artist Sylvia Wald, whose abstractions frequently featured these textures. It is described in David Acton's section on Wald in A Spectrum of Innovation: Color in American Printmaking 1890 - 1960: "The viscous top layer of ink, with its raised veins, achieves a peculiar organic freedom and delicacy. The artist creates the arborescent impasto pattern by painting with thick, sticky ink, and by lifting the screen with a sudden movement, pulling up ridges and peaks of ink that resemble the veins of leaves of insects' wings.

"This painterly method created great variations among prints within an edition, each impression being essentially unique."