Crown Point Press
Newsletter
Spring 2018
In January of 2018, Brooklyn-based painter Patricia Treib was inter-
viewed by Crown Point director Valerie Wade during her second week
of working in the Crown Point studio.
VW
: You’ve been here at the Press two weeks, now, and have com-
pleted five color aquatints. I understand that this process was new
to you. Did you find it offered you good options for developing
your work?
PT
: Oh, yes! Almost too many options!
VW
: When you’re getting started with an image, how do you begin?
PT
: It’s important that I work with something I’m observing.
The starting points I use are mostly things I find ambiguous,
with some kind of mystery to them. They are points to meditate
on—an area I find unusual, something I’d like to take further. I
will then focus on the less-nameable and more ephemeral aspects
Pendulum, 2018. Color
sugar lift, soap ground and spit bite aquatints. The images
shown here measure 15-x-11¼-inches on a 20¾-x-16½-inch sheet, each in an edi-
tion of 25. All images printed by Courtney Sennish. Visit crownpoint.com for prices
and information.
PATRICIA TREIB
Printmaking Both Fast and Slow
2
of what I am looking at and attempt to give those areas more
weight and presence through the way they are painted. I’m not
focusing on a nameable thing, but on the area around it, on
something less known.
VW
: Etching is a slow process. Did that matter to you?
PT
: I work by practicing and rehearsing and building up to the
point of marking the paper or canvas. However, I want the paintings
to feel as if they came together all at once; that they just appeared.
In printmaking, I found it challenging to bring in a sense of
speed and the feeling of simultaneity that I aim for in painting.
But, I am also interested in an image where the time of making is
more complicated and deliberate. One that is both fast and slow,
though it may appear spontaneous.
VW
: I read in a review that your work is about icons and art his-
tory. Is that true?
PT
: I have worked with a detail of a Russian icon, of a hand
emerging from a drape, and details of historical paintings, but hav-
ing a personal connection to the source I begin with is the most
important part. It’s not about reinterpreting an icon; I want it to
be about the time and experience of looking itself. The source is
in there, but in a tangential way. The question of subject matter is
elusive. I need it to start with, but it slips away—although a rem-
nant of it may remain.
VW
: What about color?
PT
: Color is one of the most important elements. I bring it in
from a separate direction, and it is at times shocking, and other
times more subtle. But in every case I want it to be something that
can shift the space, or contribute to shifting it. Hopefully it adds a
sense of animation; it isn’t sitting still.
VW
: Your palette isn’t just primary colors: red, yellow, blue. Is it
an emotional reaction?
PT
: Yes, I want it to evoke a feeling.
VW
: What did you find different about the medium of etching—
as opposed to doing a drawing or a watercolor?
PT
: Transparency and light are important to me—how the color
sits on the surface. Here, I couldn’t get to the surface, to see how
the color will exist, until the very end. So, I had to do a lot of
Straps, 2018. Color sugar lift, soap ground and spit bite aquatints.
Drape, 2018. Color sugar lift, soap ground and spit bite aquatints on gampi paper
chine collé.
3
Cuff, 2018. Color sugar lift and soap ground aquatints with aquatint.
experimentation. I later realized that I didn’t want to approximate
painting. I wanted to think about the etched plate for itself, to
think about its range.
VW
: Can you describe how you came to that conclusion?
PT
: I was working with aquatint, with large areas of tone, which
is close to how I work with painting. But in painting, I thin down
the paint significantly, and here, the thinness has to do with the
bite in the plate and that causes the thickness of the ink.
VW
: So, did you approach the plate differently than you would
approach a painting?
PT
: Yes, although I found an important connection between the
type of figure and ground reversals that I strive for in painting
and the etching process itself. I was working mostly with sugar
lift aquatint. The mask, or the painted area on the plate, is later
washed away; what remains on the plate is the absence of a painted
mark that you can then build up in different ways. I found that
this process of only being able to record the absence of a brush
mark corresponded with the types of negative spaces and spaces in-
between that I look for as subjects in my paintings.
Interval, 2018. Color sugar lift, soap ground and spit bite aquatints.
Patricia Treib in the Crown Point studio, 2018.
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In ThE CRown PoInT gAllERy
PATRICIA TREIB
May 3 - June 30, 2018