Walton Ford: 25 Years of Printmaking: Online

Walton Ford’s editioned prints expand upon the artist’s mastery of narrative watercolor paintings. Utilizing time-honored copperplate etching techniques originally developed in the 15th century, Ford’s compositions come alive with irresistible anthropomorphic projections of wildlife. This online presentation takes viewers further into the artist’s incisive depictions of nature as informed by cultural and literary history. Loaded with metaphor and shaped by a keenly anthropological eye, Ford’s complex compositions observe both the insistence of human endeavor and the instinctive ingenuity of animals, observing the violence resulting from the will to survive.

Aquatint etching is a collaborative process that brings together artists with highly specialized skills – both Francisco Goya and John James Audubon were highly proficient in the medium. Many visual and philosophical references find expression in Ford’s work through his observation of nature, both human and animal, through a darkly comic lens.

Ford subverts various conventions relating to humanity’s attempts to categorize and interpret the natural world, drawing on naturalist sketches and dioramas, zoological records, mythology, fables, and art history. While alluding to the form of naturalist field studies from the 19th century, Ford’s coded poetics are wide-ranging in their references, calling upon the viewer to use these fragmented clues as a guide by which to untangle the folkloric, historical, or imaginary event depicted in the work.

"These are techniques that were developed in a time when,
if you wanted to write someone a letter, you dipped your quill in ink.” —Walton Ford