About the Work

Etching, aquatint
5 plates
Small edition of 10
Hahnemühle paper, 230 g, off white

Follow The Tail moves in the intersection between body, motion, and thought. It is a work that doesn't begin with a finished form but with a gesture. As if the hand, before the mind has time to formulate, captures a movement already underway. The lines follow one another, swirling like tails in motion.

Here, thought is not something that governs but something that follows, perhaps even becomes embodied. In Follow the Tail, the image becomes a kind of motion-thinking, a way of understanding through following.

To follow is not to be passive, quite the opposite. It is an actively listening stance, where the artist gives up control but not presence. This creates an openness to the unexpected, where the work itself is allowed to lead. The image becomes a kind of map of tacit knowledge, that which forms through doing, through the body, rather than through logic.

Unlike the work such as Inner Ear, which focuses on inner listening, Follow the Tail I feel carries an outward-directed energy, a kind of conscious following. A willingness to let what lies outside, the as-yet undefined, lead the way.