LOVE NOTES - SUZI DAVIDOFF'S NEWEST SUITE OF ETCHINGS DRAWN FROM NATURE

LOVE NOTES, Suzi Davioff’s title for her new suite of etchings, conjours treasured hand-written notes. A love note is more than the words written. It is an object full of the hand of the writer, the scent of the lover, the texture of the time. Davidoff has created a suite of love notes to her love of the natural environment she has found in the high hills and the piercingly beautiful desert plants of West Texas. She draws on the Penstamon plant, a hardy but showy shrub that can adapt and survive in desert and plateau habitat types, such as sandy washes and woodland. Its blooms are bright pink and flourish during May and June. The three etchings of the suite, Love Notes-Penstamon I, Love Notes-Penstamon II, and Love Notes-Penstamon III were created as a palimpsest layering Davidoff shadow-like Pensamon structures over the drawings of Penstamon details. Davioff assembled smaller “notes” to make up a collaged etching that can be read into a deeper space. In each print there is a final dusting of vibrant bright pink cochineal pigment (pigment created from the famed cochineal beetle found in American cacti). As a love note, her prints bring us into the intimate closeness of the high desert with its sturdy beautiful life forms.