Forest Floor | works on paper
sanguine and umber pencil on paper
silverpoint with white heightening on prepared ground
colored pencil on paper
Beth Stoddard’s Forest Floor
essay from the 2022 exhibition catalogue
In Beth Stoddard’s work there is a delight in the natural world, in the changing seasons, and in the process of art making. Like an explorer, Stoddard finds the humble jewels of acorns and stumps on her lifelong treasure hunt through Milwaukee County’s parks and nature preserves.
Objects normally passed by without notice by most people are given new meaning and significance through her work. In her drawings, the subtlety of tone that the sanguine or umber pencil produces coaxes the paper to play, kissing its surface with its waxy touch. These observations of simple objects collected from the forest floor are rendered with tenderness and care, eyes scanning and hands translating the subtle reflected light on the shaded side of an acorn, its striated cap wraps the seed with curved contoured marks, the shadow undulates around the cap and diffuses into the light of the paper. A sanguine or brown pencil seems to be a natural extension of Stoddard’s arm, capturing slight inflections of pressure and point, shadow and light.
Silverpoint produces a slightly more limited mark because the drawing is done with a sharp metal tip which chemically reacts with a prepared ground. Subtle darks are made by building up more or less marks, similar to a pencil drawing. The lightness of touch and value of silverpoint work wonderfully with these delicate snowy observations of subtle impressions, tracks in the snow, evidence of life in the depth of winter.
Drypoint on plexiglass is a very different process. It doesn’t afford rapid visual fluctuations of tone or immediate value shifts because the working substrate is clear and the marks gouged into the plate only create a slight difference in sheen and texture. A drypoint is built over a period of time and is not seen in full until after the plate is inked and printed. Despite these limitations and the short amount of time she has worked with the printmaking process, Stoddard is able to create a wide range of tones through variation in mark making and material experimentation. She is also able to soften tones through selectively wiping the plate and has started using roulettes to create tiny dot patterns on the plate to create tone, further exploring this fresh process to translate her vision of the natural world.
There is a radiant splendor that comes with virtuosity but an enthusiastic honesty that comes with exploring a new medium. In this show we have the honor of experiencing both.
Todd Mrozinski
July 2022
Milwaukee, WI
essay from the 2022 exhibition catalogue
In Beth Stoddard’s work there is a delight in the natural world, in the changing seasons, and in the process of art making. Like an explorer, Stoddard finds the humble jewels of acorns and stumps on her lifelong treasure hunt through Milwaukee County’s parks and nature preserves.
Objects normally passed by without notice by most people are given new meaning and significance through her work. In her drawings, the subtlety of tone that the sanguine or umber pencil produces coaxes the paper to play, kissing its surface with its waxy touch. These observations of simple objects collected from the forest floor are rendered with tenderness and care, eyes scanning and hands translating the subtle reflected light on the shaded side of an acorn, its striated cap wraps the seed with curved contoured marks, the shadow undulates around the cap and diffuses into the light of the paper. A sanguine or brown pencil seems to be a natural extension of Stoddard’s arm, capturing slight inflections of pressure and point, shadow and light.
Silverpoint produces a slightly more limited mark because the drawing is done with a sharp metal tip which chemically reacts with a prepared ground. Subtle darks are made by building up more or less marks, similar to a pencil drawing. The lightness of touch and value of silverpoint work wonderfully with these delicate snowy observations of subtle impressions, tracks in the snow, evidence of life in the depth of winter.
Drypoint on plexiglass is a very different process. It doesn’t afford rapid visual fluctuations of tone or immediate value shifts because the working substrate is clear and the marks gouged into the plate only create a slight difference in sheen and texture. A drypoint is built over a period of time and is not seen in full until after the plate is inked and printed. Despite these limitations and the short amount of time she has worked with the printmaking process, Stoddard is able to create a wide range of tones through variation in mark making and material experimentation. She is also able to soften tones through selectively wiping the plate and has started using roulettes to create tiny dot patterns on the plate to create tone, further exploring this fresh process to translate her vision of the natural world.
There is a radiant splendor that comes with virtuosity but an enthusiastic honesty that comes with exploring a new medium. In this show we have the honor of experiencing both.
Todd Mrozinski
July 2022
Milwaukee, WI