Crossings

Study for mezzotint and painting, both completed in 2002.
Although he is also a painter, Kipniss is perhaps best known as a printmaker, whose mezzotints in particular have a characteristic sharpness and intensity. His drawings are rendered in the same exacting style. Kipniss's imagery is restricted to the exploration of woods and solitary trees, houses and yards, interiors and windows, chairs and vases. "Crossings" was drawn from the artist's imagination. It is an autonomous work and also a study for a print and an oil painting. In his artist's questionnaire for this work, Kipniss wrote, "The trees are not so much trees as they are, or become, elements of my pictorial vocabulary."