Torrent

George Ball

The influence of George Ball's friend and mentor, British artist Stanley William Hayter is evident in the San Francisco-born artist's finely nuanced intaglio, "Torrent".

Interestingly, Hayter had come to San Francisco in the late 1940s to guest-teach at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute), bringing the Abstract Expressionist printmaking techniques formed in his famed Atelier 17 workshop to the West Coast - but if he and Ball ever crossed paths at this juncture, there is no record of it. Prior to Ball's fortuitous introduction to Hayter in Paris in 1958, he was primarily a landscape painter and had achieved critial aclaim in his hometown. It was a Fullbright Scholarship that led him from San Francisco to Paris to study at the Sorbonne, and then to Atelier 17. After trying his hand at printmaking, he stayed on to work as Hayter's assistant indefinitely. He would remain Paris until his death in 2010.

In "Torrent" Ball uses the Atelier 17 color viscosity technique, or simultaneous color printing, to create layers of texture and tonality. The effect is similar to witnessing the aurora borealis, with shimmering colors emerging from an inky black sky.