Friday night

Tom Cullberg's prints are an extension of his paintings, which explore aspects such as narrative, intimacy, and the transient. Cullberg used references to his paintings and found images as starting points for his prints. Unsurprisingly, colour was vital in the production of these prints. Many trial proofs were pulled to establish the right colour. The prints were constructed layer by layer until a reality emerged that conveyed both the physicality of the prints and the objects they portrayed. Born in Stockholm, Sweden, Cullberg attended the Michaelis School of Fine Art and continued to live in Cape Town after his studies; today, Cullberg is regarded as a South African artist. Cullberg has held numerous solo exhibitions in South Africa and Sweden and has participated in many group exhibitions. For this print the image was etched using softground and aquatint. Aquatint is a way of making tones. Despite the “aqua” in its title, the aquatint process does not involve water. It was invented in the 1700s to simulate the effects of ink and wash drawings. With aquatint, one can capture a complete tonal range from a hint of a tone to mid-tones to shadows and extreme darks. Aquatints can be airy like those in the etchings of Paula Rego and velvety like those in the etchings of Pablo Picasso. Francisca Goya benefitted from aquatint’s ability to achieve darkness in tone and content.

To make an aquatint, a dense collection of tiny grains of gum rosin is melted onto a metal plate, which then functions as a porous ground; each grain or clump of grains becomes an island that protects the plate, which the acid will bite around. The most common means of applying the grains is with an aquatint box, which is made to create and contain a rosin dust storm. After the dust storm, the plate is slipped into the box to collect the falling grains. The plate is then taken out and heated to melt the grains, which adhere to the plate when cooled. The plate is then primed to create the details of the image. Softground marks are crumbly-looking and aren’t even from end to end. Moreover, tonal areas resembling pencil shading can be made, and impressions from flat objects such as fabric, paper, and foil can be achieved through the medium. Softground is essentially beeswax mixed with petroleum jelly or tallow and a small amount of asphaltum; the wax and petroleum jelly or tallow retain the ground’s softness, allowing for a crisp impression of anything pressed into it. The character of the line changes depending on the amount of pressure used in drawing. More pressure removes more wax, so where the artist pressed harder, the tooth-creating marks are more prominent and closer together than in the areas where only light pressure was used. Using coarsely-grained paper gives coarse-textured lines and fine paper fine lines. In general, soft ground lines look like lines made by the drawing instrument – a clutch pencil, HB pencil, ballpoint pen or any other object on which pressure can be applied.