Peruvian Portal VII is a mezzotint from 2011 by American artist Holly Downing. It is pencil signed, titled, dated, and inscribed A/P (artists proof). It was printed by Kathleen Watson on ivory Rives BFK wove paper. The platemark measures 5-7/8 x 4-1/2 inches.
Peruvian Portal VII is one of seven mezzotints created by Downing for the book Peruvian Portals which was a collaboration between the artist and the poet David St. John. The book was published in an edition of fifteen. Downing’s imagery was inspired by her experiences in the Peruvian Andes. She wrote about her inspiration for this series: “I find passageways and arches, with their light and shadow shapes, visually beautiful and metaphorically rich in their association, as in in-between or transition states, filled with ambiguity and openness.”
Holly Downing, painter, printmaker, and teacher, was born in San Francisco in 1948. She earned her B.A. at the University of California Santa Cruz in 1972. She also studied at the Royal College of Art, London, and earned her MFA from Goddard College where she researched mezzotint technique. She taught art for twenty-three years at the Santa Rosa Junior College and also taught at the University of California Santa Cruz and San Francisco State University.
Downing has received fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts; the Greenshields Foundation, Canada; the Arts Council of Great Britain; the Graham Foundation, Chicago; and the San Francisco Phelan Foundation. She is an elected member of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, London.
Holly Downing’s work is represented in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford; Scottish National Art Gallery, Edinburgh; Bibliothèque nationale de France; Chi-ba Art Museum and Nakasatsunai Art Museum, Japan; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; and Stanford University Art Museum. Downing’s mezzotints are featured in The Mezzotint, History and Technique by Carol Wax, 1990.
