About Artwork

This print by Philip Taaffe was made by the artist in his studio from his archive of linocut boards used in earlier paintings. It is part of a series of prints by artists associated with Pat Hearn Gallery and American Fine Arts, Co. to benefit an exhibition that examines the legacies of the galleries at CCS Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art.

How do we reference one of the world’s most spectacular, rarely seen and sublime experiences, the Aurora Borealis, using what amounts to miniaturized printmakers’ tools? Philip Taaffe’s distinct marks of the gouge and sharp patterned graphic shapes gives the viewer a taste of the spatial imaginary and the locus where one can imagine the extraordinary, all the while calling upon the limits of the imaginary when confronting a totalizing experience.