Dan Welden | Aesop’s Fables (Color Sequel)
Dan Welden has been a pioneer of alternative printmaking since 1970. Nationally and internationally recognized master printmaker, he was the first artist to initiate Solarplate and waterbased monotype workshops, placing him squarely in the vanguard of healthy and safe creative practice.
The series “Aesop’s Fables” is a series of symbolic gestures which employ visual opposites, including the hare and the tortoise and the grasshopper and the ant, as metaphors for the Yin Yang philosophy. Resurrecting 50-year-old found zinc etching plates that had oxidized beyond redemption. Making his own tools, the artist employed drypoint lines, salt etch, ink, paper and a press to subject the dilapidated plates to a maelstrom of mark-making gestures. This "Color Sequel” is a hybrid of his earlier black and white Aesop's Fables series, augmented with acrylic, watercolor and crayon.