Plate eight

Plate seven

plate six

Plate five

Plate four

Plate three

Plate two

Plate one

The Paradise Plates

This sequence of images, produced during the last eight months, is my considered response to
Dante's 'Paradiso'. Unlike my etchings based on the 'Inferno' and 'Purgatorio', I have avoided textual references because I was unable to create meaningful contemporary and personal

equivalents. Dante warns us from the very outset that he will take us to a place where no other poet has ventured before.

While Dante's characterisation and cosmological descriptions are masterly, the sheer doctrinal sweep of the poem forced me to find my own way. The overall theme of this folio deals with our voyage beyond the mirror during which we encounter those awesome and sublime forces that have underpinned our brief existance. The disintegration of the ego and its projections are finally resolved by our reintegration with the universal. I refused the temptation of colour in order to give more diagrammatic force to this series which is an important and personal footnote to what has gone before.

Sinclair's Press - A New Project

This year Sinclair's Press published two limited edition books, 'Et in Arcadia Ego' and ' Natural
Causes '; both were well received. '
Natural Causes', nine poems by Paul Archer illustrated with accompanying etchings by Geoff MacEwan, can be viewed on Paul's website ( http://www.paularcher.net/ ).
Next year, Sinclair's Press will release, in a limited edition of 25 copies, a selection of poems by the Dublin born poet Louis Ryan. The two previous postings will give you a taste of this venture. The poems and the etched illustrations will be presented in a bound volume and not in folio. For further information on Sinclair's Press go to http://www.sinclairspress.com/

Geoff MacEwan - 'Paris Quatorzieme' ( etching )

Louis Ryan - ' Paris Quatorzieme '.

Prison, burial ground, observatory,
The living and the dead beneath the stars,
A leafy avenue, I walk home free,
No soul abroad except for late-night cars.

The upright coffin of a sentry box -
I climb each flight of stairs past dormant rooms,
And then the topmost view my door unlocks:
An open window, pale sepulchral domes.

Somewhere a watcher turns a telescope
On nebulae beyond the city's haze;
A prisoner climbs a spiral dream of hope

And then high walls dividing us from death -
Avenues full of traffic through the days
Yield up at night their vacant length and breadth.

Et in Arcadia Ego.

This collection of ten etchings that I have just posted was never something planned; it started with 'Ausencia/Absence', an image based on a 4th century latin lyric poem sent by Paulinus of Nola to his old friend Ausonius; a passionate attempt to bridge the gulf that had opened up between his friend's cultured paganism and his own new found faith in Christ. I had used a variety of techniques in this etching and in order to explore these further I created new images, and yet it was only when the series was well under way that its real meaning emerged - Mortality and our transitory presence here which sometimes causes even our happier moments to be tinged with melancholy. Yet this awareness of the tyrrany of time has prompted poets and artists through the ages and in every culture to express their recognition of decay and death as a necessary precondition for the rebirth of beauty.

Et in Arcadia Ego - Seed Pods

Et in Arcadia Ego - Underworld

Et in Arcadia Ego - Fossil

Et in Arcadia Ego - Boulder

Et in Arcadia Ego - Rebirth

Et in Arcadia Ego - Petronius

Et in Arcadia Ego - Strange Fruit.

Et in Arcadia Ego - Ausencia/Absence

Et in Arcadia Ego - La Pareja

Et in Arcadia Ego - The Old Lemon

News from Sinclair's Press

Sinclair's Press published six artists books last year, three of which found their way into public collections. A boxed set coloured etchings based on Dante's Purgatorio was accepted into the print collection of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the 'Portrait of the Artist as an Embryo' and 'Temora' are now in the V&A. This year the press will concentrate on a limited edition of Dante's 'Paradiso'.

The coloured etching - 'Prelude' - is the first of a series of 12 images drawn from Dante's
'Paradiso'. The edition will limited to 25 sets.

You can read more about Sinclair's Press by visiting http://www.sinclairspress.com/

Prelude