For 40 years, I have made printmaking and artist books with prints my life's work. I never thought I would spend so much time pursuing only this medium. I draw an image on the surface of a copper plate and then immerse it in a container of acid. The acid corrodes the copper sculpture, creating the image. Depending on the depth of the erosion, the artist waits for minutes, hours, or days, trying to predict what the image will look like. Then nature does its thing and the copper plate corrodes and the image is engraved on the plate.
Someone once asked me what I meant by "sense of special depth that etching has". It is because the image I draw on the copper plate exists in a three-dimensional world created from the traces naturally acquired by the passage of time. Prints look like flat surfaces but actually exist in a 3D world. And I answered that it is. It is deep. The more I pursue it, the deeper it becomes. I am completely absorbed in this world.
My artist statement is the work itself.
Kazuko Watanabe
March, 2025