The Artist’s Eye

A huge work bursting with weirdness and detail, this edition of intaglio prints has been made from an original charcoal drawing by Jim and pressed into Rives Heavyweight printmaking paper.

The eye of the artist is an organ upon which the love-hungry world depends for its quasi-spiritual sustenance. It works constantly, peering into the realm of ineffable mystery and selecting a melange of impressions that can be committed to form.

But what happens when this jewel in the skull is trained upon itself? Catastrophe! It sees that it is a pitiful thing like an oat, and the true nature of the artist’s task and the extent of his self-delusion is made shockingly apparent. Ironically, this artist, this seer, this shaman does not take his exalted position seriously enough, and fails to see almost everything he is attaining through his single-mindedness.

In this painstakingly observed record of the actual experience the artist’s eye notes that the artist suffers from a kind of tunnel-vision, which makes the pursuit of the perfectly expressive shape or the perfect pink to go with grey-green seem a worthy goal, when in reality he is just stirring up trouble by not being fully aware of the extent of his involvement.

—Jim Woodring