Skimmer

A patchwork of shapes coalesces in Andreas Eriksson’s etching Skimmer. It bears his painterly signature of working on the border between figuration and abstraction. The individual colour fields can be read as geological forms, patches of grass, bushes, or trees; the overall composition evokes a sense of the landscape. Like in his paintings, Eriksson’s choice of colours radiates intention. Nevertheless, the etching’s colour palette is surprising, ranging from soft, muted pastel shades to strikingly bright, almost neon-like tones.

For Skimmer, Andreas Eriksson has further developed a sandblasting drypoint technique, which he had first experimented with for his print Risberg, 2022. The tonal patchwork of shapes in Skimmer was created by sandblasting the copper plates through specially made stencils. A variety of particles was used in the sandblasting process to create different indentations in the plates: sand resulted in smooth, grainy surfaces, whereas gravel left a coarse, stipple texture. The final etching is composed from the five individually sandblasted plates printed on top of one another, so that the different shapes meet and overlap.