DAN WELDEN
Solo 100
October 21, 2023 – January 14, 2024
Opening and Artist Reception
Saturday, October 21, 5-7pm
with a debut viewing of the documentary film Lasting Impressions at 3:30 pm
Artist Talk and Demonstration
Thursday, November 30, 5pm
with a viewing of the documentary film Lasting Impressions at 3:30 pm
Masterworks: The Inside Story
Saturday, January 6, 4pm
Dan Welden will recount personal tales and anecdotes from his collaborations with artists Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Kiki Smith, Eric Fischl, Kurt Vonnegut, David Salle, Dan Flavin and others.
Dan Welden is a master printmaker, painter, author, educator, innovator, and inventor of the solarplate etching process. Welden has been making and teaching printmaking for more than 60 years and often collaborated with artists to explore their personal imagery and narrative with printmaking. Mitchell•Giddings Fine Arts is honored to present Dan Welden’s 100th exhibition. The solo exhibit will feature his prints and paintings and also include “masterworks,” hand-pulled collaborative impressions of current and past masters, created in Sag Harbor, New York. Artists include Willem de Kooning, Elaine de Kooning, Kiki Smith, Eric Fischl, Dan Flavin and others.
“I am an experimenter, explorer and a seeker of beauty. When I set out to work, there is no image in mind, but the vision unfolds as the work evolves. It usually begins with simple forms and marks with broad areas. It then becomes more refined and delicate and knits itself together through line.
I am a process person, interested in employing materials and techniques to the ‘landscape’ of my mind. My drawings, paintings and prints evolve from the idea of linear pathways echoing from the tracks of animals in nature, fissures in rock palisades and the patterns created by my hands becoming ‘playful’ with my tools.
Learning to read a printing plate before inking, is like sensing the log before wielding the axe. So goes my act of creativity, being aware of what resonates in front of me and responding with marks, colors and textures.”
~ Dan Welden
Welden’s immense reputation makes an exhibition of new work this focused and this virtuosic an exciting event. Welden the wizard pulls the Hairy Hare out of his hat. Its skittering lines cross a map-like moor of golds, greys and atmospheric lilacs and blues, a fragment of lime-green furze, geological plates of color abutting and then dropping into a velvety black. A delta of blue here, a bond between purple and yellow there, are all marks of a confident colorist. If the clouds of chromaticism invoke Diebenkorn, the linear poetry is all Miro, whose threads cross blue skies tethered to floating shapes with a similarly dreamy calligraphic legerdemain.
~ Charles A. Riley II, PhD
from “The Fabulous Art of Dan Welden in Celebration of 100 Solo Exhibitions”
“As a printmaker, I find ‘line’ becomes a key to the work. The tools may vary, crayon on stone, steel blades on wood, diamond-tipped power tools on glass, or a screwdriver on museum board as I work and play. My hands sometimes ebb and flow, sometimes struggle, across the picture plane, twisting a chiseled pencil, sometimes dancing, other times marching. There are moments of silence, where no physical activity takes place, just the mind and heart working to figure it out.“
Dan Welden
Panda Haircut, 2014
solarplate etching, screen print
46” x 39”
sold (2 more variations available)
“As the innovator of a printmaking process called ‘Solarplate’, I create on a light-sensitive polymer steel backed material. The technique offers me more freedom and spontaneity and through this process I can substitute sunlight and rainwater instead of using hazardous acids, solvents and grounds. In addition to the act of printmaking, I joyfully incorporate my DNA with expressionistic mark-making on the printed image.“
“My drawings, paintings and prints evolve from the idea of linear pathways echoing from the tracks of animals in nature, fissures in rock palisades and the patterns created by my hands becoming ‘playful’ with the tools I work with. The combination of using Akua Inks with Solarplate is an ideal marriage of ‘healthier’ ways of creating as well as aiding in the spontaneity of the process.“
As deft in the verbal as in the visual sphere, Welden the master pedagogue drops insights like breadcrumbs for us to follow into the dense understory of his teeming grove, including this unforgettable connection between landscape and his abstract works. An allusion this accurate is legible to those of us on the East End who see the annual traces of deer paths through marsh grass or runnels carved by rodents into meadows, those intriguing tracks and traces of wildlife that are nature’s own cartography.
Specific intent is given to the vision of a rural hillside, where for generations, animals trampled the grass and ever so slightly altered its character to subtle patterns. The images sometimes deal with my feeling for ‘landscape terrains’ and the linear connections between locations, at times representation of the metaphors typing people and relationships together. “These are the mysteries I attempt to capture on canvas.”
~ Charles A. Riley II, PhD
from “The Fabulous Art of Dan Welden in Celebration of 100 Solo Exhibitions”
Masterworks
DAN WELDEN : Solo 100
What this show means to MGFA
Being a master printmaker, painter, author, educator, innovator, and inventor of the solarplate etching process, Dan Welden’s presence in the world of printmaking is ubiquitous and profound. After more than 60 years of making and teaching printmaking, his own creative curiosity has made him a sought-after instructor. Artists collaborate with Welden to explore their personal imagery and narrative as described with a new language.
Visitors to the region are in for a treat: in celebrating his birthday, Welden has gifted Mitchell-Giddings Fine Arts, Brattleboro, Vermont, with the rare good fortune of celebrating his 82nd birthday with his 100th solo exhibition—a substantial number for any living artist. It will revolve around Welden the printmaker and painter and will consist of his works on paper and canvas ranging from small to enormous. Dan Welden Solo 100, will also feature ‘masterworks,’ hand pulled collaborative impressions of current and past masters in a first time exhibition that were created in Sag Harbor, New York. Artists include Willem de Kooning, Elaine de Kooning, Kiki Smith, Eric Fischl, Dan Flavin and a host of others.
Mitchell•Giddings Fine Arts offers contemporary art in a variety of media, featuring emerging and established artists. Visit us on Main Street in Brattleboro, Vermont.