"Stow"
Ink Plate Etching, Signed
May 1, 1975
Artist Proof
11" x 15" (unframed)
16" x 21" (framed)

About the Piece

This, my first etching, was a surprise and adventure to me. Scribing into the waxy coating on the plate was unlike the feel of pencil rubbing paper, nor anything like the fluid feel of brush and ink. It was fascinating, then, to see incision bite into metal, the whole plate depressing the soft paper in order to print its image. The end result, with such precision of ink on paper, became always a surprise-indeed, many times over.

About the Artist

Isabelle Greene is a working artist and landscape architect currently living with her husband, John, and practicing in Santa Barbara. She has been designing gardens since 1964, nearly 600 of them now. After completing her taxonomic botany degree at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), she undertook post-graduate art courses at the University of California, Santa Barbara, (UCSB) and subsequently fell into a botanical-illustration career. When a close friend suggested she design the landscape for his new office, this spontaneous departure led to a civic award and thence another new career. Meanwhile, she continued on privately with the fine arts. When well along in her landscape practice, she sought landscape architecture coursework from the University of Oregon and UCLA night school, earning her licensing certification in 1982. She was named a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects in 1992, has lectured internationally, and has been widely published. In 2005 she was given a major retrospective showing of her life's work at UCSB's Art, Design and Architecture Museum. When she isn't designing landscapes, she is actively pursuing her art career, often referencing nature and landscape. She is deeply committed to sustainable practices. Her landscapes age well and flow with the land and climate, and they provide enduring beauty. She is a native of California, the granddaughter of Henry Greene of the Craftsman-era firm Greene and Greene Architects.