Dan Welden

Dan Welden is a printmaker whose abstract works are, he says, "firmly based in observation and conception of nature." The initial vitreographs that he produced at Littleton Studios in Spruce Pine, North Carolina are a series of four prints titled "Glass Canyon." Completed in 1991, the series was part of an ongoing body of work based on Canyon de Chelly in Arizona. Wleden's first view of the canyon was from a black and white nineteenth century photogravure by Timothy O'Sullivan. The mystery of the photograph and the glimpse it provided of the White House aboriginal ruins inspired Welden to create 120 paintings. Two and a half years later Welden saw Canyon de Chelly firsthand and says that he was overwhelmed by its spirituality. Humbled by the experience, Welden feared that he would not be able to make art about the place. Sitting for a time in the canyon soothed his anxiety. The smell of the dusty earth and the warmth of the sun reflected from the stone made him able, he says, to "physically feel the depth and the dimension of the canyon" when he approached the subject again.

Although totally abstract, the "Glass Canyon" prints suggest the shifting play of light on sheer rock walls and imply even the heaviness and texture of stone. Welden returned to Littleton Studios many times over the years. His subsequent vitreograph series, "Sheepwalk," was based on a trip to new Zealand in 1993, where he was fascinated by the way sheep trampled paths into the grassy hillsides.

In the "Sheepwalk" prints he says that he wanted to "put himself into the mind and body of the animals" as they wandered over the hillsides. The prints, he says, "involve feeling and emotion as well as discipline and structure." Jagged lines in the prints represent the tracks of an imaginary sheep journey. Using siligraphy (waterless lithography) in a combination with intaglio techniques, he allowed his pencil to roam over the vitreograph plate.

With this method of drawing Welden opened a new vein in his printmaking that he has mined ever since. When he began such a work he had no way of knowing what the end result would be. 'If it makes it, it makes it," he says. "If it doesn't it gets destroyed." The vitreographs that Welden produced at Littleton Studios in subsequent years recall the compositions of the "Canyon" and "Sheepwalk" prints wit large, angular areas of overlapping colors marked by thin lines that crisscross, zigzag or meander through them.

In his visits to Littleton Studios in the late 1990s Welden added digital transfer color to the vitreograph processes to create fluid, painterly effects in the prints. In more recent visits he has combined vitreography with the Solarplate printmaking method that he developed in the 1970s. Combined with vitreography it adds embossed texture to the otherwise smooth surface of the vitreograph print.

Collections holding Dan Welden's work include Amity art Foundation (Darien, Connecticut), Baltimore Museeum of Art, Catolica University, Lima, Peru, Chase Manhattan Bank (New York City0, Forrester Gallery, Oamaru, New Zealand, the Lausinger Library of Georgetown University (Washington, DC0, Guild Hall Museum 9East Hampton, New York), Portland Museum of Art (Oregon) and Temple University (Philadelphia0. his awards include grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and the Queen Elizabeth Arts Council in New Zealand for an international artist's residency.

Dan Welden is the founder and master printer of Hampton Editions Limited, a fine print atelier in Sag Harbor, New York. There he has collaborated with artists Jimmy Ernst, Esteban Vincente, Joan Freilicher and others. With Pauline Muir, Welden coauthored the definitive book on Solarplate print technique, Printmaking in the Sun (published by Watson Guptil, 2001).

Written by Ellen Fischer, director of The Littleton Collection gallery