From the Woods is a mezzotint created in 2006 by American printmaker, Holly Downing. It is pencil signed, titled, and dated and was printed by the artist on Rives BFK wove paper. From the Woods was printed in an edition of 40 impressions, this being numbered 1/40. The dimensions are 6 x 15-3/8 inches platemark.
Chanterelles freshly gathered from the woods are displayed to show their elegant, irregular form, their forked gills exposed beneath ruffled edges. The chanterelle mushroom is coveted as a culinary delicacy, but it is the process of locating the fungi that is part of its lore. Each variety of chanterelle requires a coinciding tree (for instance, in California it is often found on the coast live oak), and weather conditions are key, making them seasonal, as with fruit. In California, they are at their peak in April and November. In preparation for From the Woods, Downing arranged the coy fungi as a still life, displaying their beauty and the complexity of their structure.
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 Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford; Scottish National Art Gallery, Edinburgh; Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; Chi-ba Art Museum and Nakasatsunai Art Museum, Japan; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; and the Stanford University Art Museum. Downing’s mezzotints are featured in The Mezzotint, History and Technique by Carol Wax, 1990.
