For Wolf Kahn, the process of making monotypes is a creatively rewarding one. His process involves working in tandem alongside a master printer with zinc plates, large wet sheets of heavy Arches paper, and a massive etching press. A lush array of Caran d’Ache water-based crayon inks await as composition, scale and color are applied and ready for a single run through the etching press.

This exhibition explores Kahn’s printmaking, which is an embodiment of his mentor Hans Hofmann’s statement, “color creates the light.” Through studies of color in what one may regard as a romantic landscape, oak trees and barns are transformed from their everyday presence. “For an artist” he asserts, “it can often be said that when he’s looking, he’s working.” And it is in this process of looking that Kahn begins to abstract the spaces where sky meets barn, barn meets the messy foreground, or the branches of a pecan tree interrupt and melt into the sky. The artist’s passion for monotypes has resulted in the creation of many landscape compositions through which his subjects “transcend the everyday...to represent an overarching insight.”

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Image: Wolf Kahn, Orange Band, 1990