The Appointment by GEORGE SHAW

The hand-drawn soft-ground etching technique, where the images is printed in reverse to the image drawn on to the plate renders these everyday scenes strikingly unfamiliar, an effect which the artist found very attractive.Shaw draws his subject matter from the Tile Hill estate, near Coventry, where he grew up. Working from an archive of photographs he took of the estate, Shaw constantly revisits the scenes of his adolescence. The tree in The Appointment has been bitten in the acid bath much longer than its surroundings, leading to a darker imprint that in turn creates an almost sculptural depth. The use of a second plate, for the background tone only, lends the image a distinctive mood, evoking perhaps a misty autumn afternoon.