Pam Evelyn created the polymer gravure etching especially for Whitechapel Gallery to accompany Action, Gesture, Paint Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-1970, 9 Feb - 7 May 2023.

The edition is printed from three polymer gravure plates, hand drawn by the artist, in five colours.

For Evelyn the prints comment on the direct nature of what it is to make, the push and pull of conviction and restraint. When making requires concentration and a deep commitment to the moment, followed by a rejection, to look away and consider what it is that exists in the gesture.

The print was made by extracting forms from the artist’s drawings, using the repetition in print-making to create a familiarity with the initial mark and an attempt to then understand its very nature. Like Evelyn’s works on paper, the prints reveal the processes and impulses that underscore her paintings. Where Evelyn’s paintings are produced with many layers of application, inversely, her works on paper are stripped back, direct, immediate. Almost like a signature, or handwriting in an abstract language, the works on paper reveal a trace of their owner.

Evelyn describes the medium of print as both fluid, an impression of the moment, but also fixed and repeated. The importance of gesture in this print is, for Evelyn, a response to the vitality of marks witnessed in the paintings exhibited in Action, Gesture, Paint, the handwriting in all paintings is bold, with impact and intention in each mark.