I finally managed to pull some impressions of a drypoint plate that I've been working on for a while now, called Melencolia II, after Albrecht Dürer's Melencolia I. Obviously I’m not trying to compete with Dürer — I am an utter amateur printmaker — but when the daily toddler debris of my life reminded me of the debris in his Meisterstich, I couldn’t resist doing my own version through the lens of motherhood. A Mutterstich, if you will. The dimensions of my plate are exactly the same as the original. I kept the famous polyhedron, but the sphere has been replaced by a birthing ball, the sleeping hound by a stuffed toy, the ladder by a pikler triangle, the geometer's tools by children's toys, and the enema by a breast pump. My daughter takes the place of the downcast genius/putto in the original.
Dürer and his contemporaries believed that a melancholic state could induce periods of extreme creative fervour, followed by bouts of depressive stupor, as represented in his famous engraving. Well, I think they should have tried being the primary caregiver to a small child — in my experience, it gives you loads of new project ideas, with none of the resources to even begin them, despite being resourceful as heck!
There is also something about the frustrations, fickleness and serendipity of printmaking that makes it comparable to the experience of being a full-time parent. Sometimes it all seems to work out well, you pull back the paper to reveal a lovely impression, and it feels like a blessing to be able to spend time making prints. Other days, you end up with ink all over your hands, a muddy impression, and a sense that you probably shouldn't have started in the first place.
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