Exhibit // PETER PAONE AT THE BRANDYWINE MUSEUM OF ART
Deep Cuts
Early Peter Paone images made with etching and aquatint techniques still delight
by Heather Shayne Blakeslee
EXCERPT //
Artist Peter Paone, 86, is known mostly for his paintings, but until October 13 you can experience some of his early prints—and peek at his engraving tools and copper plates—at the show “In Shadows’ Embrace: Prints by Peter Paone” at the Brandywine Museum of Art.
Paone made the 22 images in his 20s during a period when he was experimenting with etching techniques. He was in retreat from the authoritarian Catholicism that permeated the atmosphere of his South Philadelphia youth in an Italian-American immigrant enclave that also included many Irish, Jewish, and black Americans. His father was a laborer, and like many new arrivals at the time, not a shred of extra money was available in the house—no bikes, no roller skates, “nothing”—he told me, so the free classes he took at Fleisher Art Memorial three nights a week were a lifeline for a child who showed an early gift for art and an insatiable appetite for learning new techniques, modes, and materials. //
For full text and images, consider reading RQ in print, on a Sunday afternoon, sun streaming through your window, coffee in hand, and nary a phone alert within sight or in earshot… just fine words, fine design, and the opportunity to make a stitch in time. // Subscribe or buy a single issue today. // Print is dead. Long live print. //