Pine Trees

Steven Dixon // 1988

Etching
City Hall

About

Pine Trees is an etching made by coating a metal plate with a blocking material and scraping through that material with a needle or drawing tool. An acid bath eats away at the exposed portions of the plate when submerged. Wherever the plate is exposed is where the printed image will appear. The result is a fine art print that can be produced in editions.

This print depicts the sun dappled floor of a pine forest, common to Alberta’s climate. Naturalistic shading of the trees is created by layers marks, ranging from detailed hatching and controlled lines to splatters and gestural marks. The result is a landscape drawing that inspires awe and evokes the sublime experience one feels when surrounded by nature.

Steven Dixon

Steven Dixon was born in Woodstock, New Brunswick in 1960. In 1983 he graduated from Mount Allison University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. That same year he was the recipient of a Greenshield Foundation grant, an award given to young artists to assist in establishing their careers. He received his Master’s degree in printmaking from Arizona State University in 1995.

Dixon has exhibited his paintings and prints throughout Canada and internationally, and his work is represented in numerous collections including the New Brunswick Art Bank, Owens Art Gallery, the Alberta Art Foundation, Aliant, the University of Alberta and the Museum of Contemporary Graphic Art, Frederickstad, Norway. He was also the recipient of the Ernst & Young’s “Great Canadian Printmaking Competition.”

Based in Edmonton, Dixon works as a technician in the Printmaking Department at the University of Alberta. He specializes in intaglio and relief printing techniques and photographic processes. Although he has experimented with a wide variety of alternative photographic processes, for the past decade he has worked almost exclusively with photogravure. He is known for his digital photographs of the orphaned factories, mines and mills dotted around Alberta’s landscape.