Artwork of the Week: September 3, 2024
As the seasons melt from one to another, Henry Neil Rasmusen’s monotype landscape prompts viewers to consider these natural transitions. Abstracted rock formations rise to meet a linear sky. Porous networks and intricate fractals decorate the mountainside, imitating the geological process of erosion. Like magma or snow, this liquified landscape threatens to slide off the paper any moment. The longer we look, the more we wonder: how did the artist do it?
Henry Neil Rasmusen fathered the contemporary monotype and experimented with the medium throughout his life. A painterly form of printmaking, monotypes involve the process of applying and removing ink from a matrix surface—usually a thin sheet of metal, glass, or plastic—and transferring the image to paper via printing press. After applying an initial film of ink, Rasmusen likely created the bubbling negative spaces by using an alcohol or oil-based solvent to manipulate, dissolve, and reticulate the ink. Tilting the matrix at a vertical angle, he also let the ink run downward to achieve a “drippy” effect.* In other areas where the print appears more linear, a flat brush or card may have been used to form the subtle gradient lines of the sky and sedimentary laminations of the rock. Once satisfied with the image, a piece of paper was placed over the matrix and run through a hand-printing etching press, causing the drips to further run and stretch in the same direction of the press’s movement.* This combination of techniques and materials result in Rasmusen’s mesmerizing Melting Landscape.
*The MOA is grateful to Gary Barton (Professor) and Jen Watson (Associate Professor) at the BYU Department of Art for their generous insights.
