Fire

Josephine Halvorson focuses on everyday objects, often elemental or environmental, in close-up and intensely colored compositions. An accomplished painter, Halvorson created the life-size “Fire,” her first etching, during numerous sessions spent observing an old wood-burning stove at the printmaking workshop Wingate Studio in New Hampshire. The stove is a Jotl, the brand her parents sold during her childhood. Halvorson started with watercolor drawings that she then translated to multiple copper plates, in consultation with two master printers who explained the variety of intaglio techniques and possibilities available to her. Color aquatint, a specialty of Wingate Studios, is especially well-suited to exploring a range of tones and painterly effects in vivid juxtaposition.