Image size: 28 x 41 cm, 16" x 11". Paper size: 33 x 48 cm, 19" x 13". Edition limited to just 150 prints, each signed and numbered by the artist.

victima -
vitella - little calf -
flayed skin shading a lamp

illumination.

This is a work from a new VELLUM series. Traditionally it's the finest material for calligraphy, but I also make conceptual reminders that this is SKIN. The striking text is from Catherine Byron's book, "The Getting of Vellum"- her book was partially inspired by my work, and we have collaborated on various projects. Catherine witnessed the skinning of a slunk (stillborn) calf using a "winch and a steel hawser". Slunks yield the finest vellums, and the skins I use are made by Joe Katz of Vellum & Parchment Works in Kildare here in Ireland. I favor skins with pronounced natural graining- hair follicles and vein impressions, etc.

"Victima" is Latin for a beast for sacrifice, and is the origin of the English word victim. Catherine Byron wrote the extract quoted in this work in reference to an earlier work of mine, (see fuller text below), made when I was dealing with themes of animal sacrifices described in the Old Testament. (Leviticus 1-10).

The image in this print was created by morphing scans of my own skin into slunk vellum skins. The calligraphy was written with Brause metal nibs. The hole in the top left of the skin, deriving from a not uncommon manufacturing flaw, helps to add a visual reference to an artists palette. It also can be seen as a sun/moon image in the body as landscape metaphor.

In the last years of the twentieth century
artist calligrapher Denis Brown
has set his scriptorium up
in an ordinary new house
in an ordinary new estate
on Dublin's southern edge.
In a might-be bedroom,
his workroom,
his steel pen has been
moving across fresh vellum,
a piece the shape and size,
say, of a gospel page,
but a dark pigmented skin —

A good calligrapher
will have his flow and his rhythm
and he will be able to sense the spacing-
it comes almost from your pulse, really.

He inscribes the word 'VICTIM'
and while the ink is drying
into the skin's soft nap -
he is piecing shards of glass
into a spiky corona
to halo that single word
from the Latin: victima -
living creature offered in sacrifice.
He fixes shard upon shard
to a frame of burnt wood
that will hold
skin - word - glass
together
in a charred box.
A razor-edged dark hole
that might hold
victima -
vitella - little calf -
flayed skin shading a lamp

illumination.

From "The Getting of Vellum" by Catherine Byron
www.salmonpoetry.com/vellum.html

ABOUT THE ARCHIVAL MEDIA

Printed from an Epson 2100 using Epson’s 7-colour UltraChrome ink system at 2880 x 1440 dpi on Epson acid free watercolor paper, a combination to ensure long lasting quality. Wilhelm Imaging Research (www.wilhelm-research.com), suggest prints using this combination of ink and media will last for over 90 years without appreciable fading , based on indoor display framed under glass. Dark Storage Stability Rating at 73°F/50%RH is indicated to last over 200 years. The detail is super fine at this resolution, being almost 10 times finer than normal commercial printing, so that even under a magnifying glass the prints hold up to very close scrutiny.

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