Winter Beech Leaves

Winter Beech Leaves

Fall season in Vermont is legendary for striking autumn colors but walking the winter woods brings one’s attention to the understated beech leaves, clinging to their branches after all others have been buried beneath snow. The delicate beech leaves twist in the wind, creating a characteristic rattling sound which punctuates winter’s silence. Their muted yellow-gold color stands out against the stark white and brown landscape until the paper-thin leaves finally fall near winter’s end, having first faded to translucent browns.  

The “Winter Beech Leaves”, shown here in the Beech Portfolio originated from a photograph I’d taken while walking through winter woods in Sharon, VT. These particular beech trees have since succumbed to beach bark disease.

I selected one photograph to prepare several different sized solar plates for hand-pulled prints and chose the 5 x 7” plate to test colors and technique. Prints made during the testing of a particular etched plate are referred to as Artist’s Proofs (AP) and they usually differ from one another. The artist can then determine optimal parameters from such “practice prints” before preparing a series of identical, numbered prints known as an edition.