Description

The element that interested me most in this poem is Thomas’ concern with the creative process. Amongst other things, the poem addresses the act of writing poetry and the struggle that it entails.The ambiguity and multiple meanings found in the poemencouraged an approach that echoed these vary ingelements. The image deals with Thomas’‘internal landscape’. The foreground figure observes himself looking through a veil of words at the external world.The monumental figures, after Picasso, suggest both the ‘star-gestured children’ and the ‘wordy shapes of women’.

In many ways etching and working with a copper plate is analogous to the writer’s struggle, elements may be considered and then dispensed with, emphases shift and new meanings are uncovered as the work gradually moves forward towards a resolution.

During the etching, scraping and burnishing of the plate, marks and textures appear and disappear, elements of the image come and go. It is a fluid, evolutionary processengineered with acid, aquatint, scraper, burnisher and etching needle.