b/w mezzotint and aquatint
1992, 19 1/2 x 29
edition: 75
signed in pencil.
Shadows in house on Spring Street in Brussels
Anne Dykmans employs her superb command of engraving techniques, especially mezzotint, to create a special light which brings out the beauty in the simplest of everyday subjects – a chair, a ribbon, the beach. In addition to the beauty of form and light, she is also able to evoke emotion as in the sensuous human dialogue we feel through the imagery of two softly swaying beach chairs on a warm summer evening.
Critic Roger Pierre Turine has written that “the subject is of little importance. All that counts in Dykmans’ work is that halo of light that surrounds it; that moment of solitude, never foreign to us as long as we are able to discover those same images within ourselves. She approaches her commonplace realities gently, yet there is always a brilliance in her work, ever accentuated by the subtle play between the possible nuances from black to white.”
