Hunting Scene II

Ynez Johnston

"Hunting Scene II" was published by the International Graphic Arts Society, Sept. 1965, Series #65 in an edition of 210. Half the edition was sold in Europe, the other half in the U.S. The artist got 10 proofs as part of the payment.

One of two prints Johnston did for IGAS, she used color aquatint and etching to create this work, which was printed by the artist and her husband, poet John Berry, who noted for the IGAS catalogue entry:

"Man - cosmological and metaphysical - is the referent and point of departure for the symbol-like forms which Johnston has developed, although these defy identification with recognizable objects. The forms of man's culture are seen as parts of a living organism, of man himself: not 'mere' man as the segmented biped, but as tje expanding universe of his consciousness. The architecture with which he has encrusted the earth partakes of the turbulent life of its builder....cities, cultivated regions, diversified and discrete, all are alive, and all - sometimes through the mediation of himself as a beast - all are a part of this single, mythical, human organism."

Scholar/curator Gerald Nordland noted about Johnston's graphic work:

"Johnston utilizes the multiple perspective devices of the etchings, flattens space, integrates foreground, mid-ground and background into a Byzantine-modern composition. The units of effect....has a forceful, expressive, and abstract quality not dissimilar to the stone tessare in Byzantine mosaics. The total effect is formal, unique and masterful."