Buddleia

Judith Rothchild

Unlike her ususal mezzotints Rothchild burnished the foreground and background of the plate so only the central mezzotinted area of the composition printed.

A stem of buddleia, or Butterfly Bush as it is commonly known, springs from the mouth of a small, dark bottle in Judith Rothchild’s uncluttered mezzotint. She’s chosen a large format for the composition which further amplifies the simple beauty of the flower, and her stunning ability to manipulate the laborious medium into a spectrum of delicate, heavy, and graduated tonalities is never more apparent than in “Buddleia”.

There are 140 species of buddleia, over 60 of which are native in the Americas, Africa, or parts of Asia. In the United States certain blossoms are major attractants for native pollinators, including the endangered Monarch butterfly, and are key to healthy ecosystems.

Judith Rothchild was born in the U.S. but lives and works in France. Her preferred printmaking medium is mezzotint, which develops an image from a black surface. In this mezzotint of blackberries she runs the gamut from an intense black background to the touches of white light on the blackberries and many tones between.

Rothchild comments about her work: "The skill of the process is to bring up the image slowly, caressing the forms with the burnisher, occasionally printing proofs. At the same time, the surface of the plate evolves; the roughness becomes soft velvet and the plate is finally ready to return all the hours of drawing that one has put in."