Running on Empty

David Avery

David Avery channels the Master printmaker Hendrick Goltzius's circular engravings The Four Disgracers, done in 1588, for the updated etched composition Running on Empty. Tantalus, having offended the gods, is tumbling down to earth. As he falls, Tantalus holds a gas nozzle which spews gasoline into the atmosphere. In the background can be found smokestacks belching smoke, an oil derrick, an automobile, a gasoline station, an oil pump jack and, at the right, mountains with a large elephant. Is he falling to earth or hell? The text around the image reads: Those Who Cannibalize Their Children's Future - And Expect No Consequences, Quam Miser What Agonies Of Thirst Tantalus Suffers Who Would Feed His Children To The Gods.

Avery commented on this image: "When I was working on a series of etchings based on The Four Disgracers by Hendrick Goltzius, I kept returning to the hand in his depiction of the fall of Icarus. This obsession ultimately became the basis for A Kind of Flying—The Invisible Hand, combined with a take on Goya’s mysterious etching from The Proverbs. Goya’s A Way of Flying provides no clue to interpretation, and efforts to connect it with political events for social commentary seem to fall short. I became interested in subverting these images to depict the consequences of Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the marketplace (so popular right now!), replete with riffs on the grotesqueries used so effectively by Hieronymus Bosch, to enhance the effect."

David Avery, born on February 4, 1952, has been creating finely detailed black and white etchings in San Francisco for twenty years. Originally trained as a classical musician, he discovered etching almost by accident in a class at the local community college. After learning the basic techniques, he intently pursued his own course of discovery, being essentially self-taught. Over the years, he has developed an exceptional technique and has created a remarkable body of finely wrought miniature etchings and drypoints. Even though “black and white doesn’t sell,” he has eschewed the use of color, finding the subtleties and tonalities of black and white most capable of creating the psychological mood that allows his work to be effective.

Avery has a long and active exhibition history and his prints have earned him numerous awards and honors. He has been a member of and exhibited with the California Society of Printmakers, the Washington Printmakers, and the Society of American Graphic Artists.

His works are represented in the collections of the Fogg Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Turner Print Museum, California State University, Chico, California; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; the New York Public Library, New York; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California; Stanford University Library, Special Collections, Stanford, California; and the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.