Finding Paths, Dark Green Edition by Alantherock: Company on the Path

Finding Paths, Dark Green Edition is an abstract art print of dark branching lines on a deep green ground, with an ochre disc and a mauve disc hanging among them. Follow the central line down the sheet and you find it is not travelling alone. A thin thread of ochre runs down one side of it and a thread of mauve down the other, and both have leaked from the discs above.

Finding Paths, Dark Green Edition by Alan Pedersen, Alantherock is a mixed media abstract art print and one of four editions of the same drawing. Dark lines branch across a deep green ground beneath an ochre disc, a mauve disc and a dark green disc. It is printed on Fine Art Freja paper at 265 g in three sizes.

Two colours travel down the central line

The central line in this edition carries the colour of both discs above it, one on each side. Start at the ochre disc in the upper left. Paint has gathered at its base and run down in drips, and one of them becomes a narrow ochre stem that reaches the central line. From there the ochre keeps going, down the left edge of the line, as a thread no wider than a pencil stroke.

The mauve disc on the right has dripped too. Its longest drip reaches the branch beneath it, and the mauve follows the underside of that branch into the central line and turns down its right edge. From that junction to the foot of the picture, the two colours run side by side, ochre on the left and mauve on the right, with the dark line between them. They never cross and they never mix. Both arrive together at the dark border along the bottom of the sheet.

The third disc, low on the left, sends nothing down. It is a green deeper than the ground around it, with a pale ring painted near its upper edge, and it keeps to itself.

In the note that introduced the series in 2020, Alan Pedersen wrote about the paths behind it: some we walk alone, and "other times we walk along with someone." This edition shows both on one sheet. A network of dark routes that nothing travels, and down the middle of it, two colours going the same way.

The same path in a new light

The colour threads are not new to this edition. They run down the central line in all four Finding Paths prints. In Blue, Rose and Grey the lines are close to white, and the threads beside them are a soft rose, sand or grey. There they sit between the brightness of the line and the brightness of the ground, so the eye takes them for the edge of the line, a faint shadow along it, and moves on.

In Dark Green the line turns near black, and the threads become the brightest marks along the whole central route. The ochre and the mauve are lighter than the line they follow and lighter than the green on either side of it. This is the edition in which you see them first.

Alan wrote that sometimes we follow the same path "in a new light", and it is a fair description of what the four editions do. Every disc and every junction holds its position from one print to the next. What changes is the whole set of colours, and each set was, in his words, "carefully selected". Here the upper disc is ochre with cloud drifting across it, the right disc is a dusty mauve, and the lower disc is a green deeper than the ground. The lines are printed in the same near black green as the narrow border round the picture, so the network and its frame read as one piece.

Finding Paths, Blue Edition follows the same network outwards, to the edges of the sheet. The Dark Green Edition is the one to live with if what interests you is what travels along it.

Choosing Dark Green, and choosing a size

Dark Green is the deepest of the four editions, and the one printed with a dark border round the picture. The other three run their ground close to the edge of the sheet. Here a narrow band of near black green frames the drawing, and it changes how the print sits in a frame. In a pale oak frame, as in the product photograph on a soft green wall, the border reads as a dark mount against light wood. In a black frame the border and the frame merge, and the green panel seems to sit further back.

The print suits a room that already holds wood, plants or deep colour, because it adds depth rather than brightness. The two warm discs keep it from feeling heavy, and the threads down the centre give the eye somewhere to go once the discs have been noticed.

Three sizes are available: 30x40 cm, 50x70 cm and 70x100 cm. Every size is printed on Fine Art Freja paper at 265 g and marked with Alan Pedersen, Alantherock's signature. The frame shown in the photographs is for illustration and is not included.

Two colours set out from two different places on this sheet and end up on the same line. Neither gives way to the other. They share the route to the bottom of the picture, a pencil width apart, each keeping its own colour the whole way down.

It is a dark print and a companionable one. The kind you pass every day, and now and then follow all the way down.

About Finding Paths, Dark Green Edition

What paper is Finding Paths, Dark Green Edition printed on?
It is printed on Fine Art Freja paper, 265 g, chosen to hold the deep green ground and the colour of the discs. The original was made from acrylic paint, coffee painting, watercolour and drawing, combined with texture, photographs and graphic shapes. The frame shown in the product images is not included.

What sizes does the Dark Green Edition come in?
Three sizes: 30x40 cm, 50x70 cm and 70x100 cm. All four Finding Paths editions are offered in the same three sizes.

How is the Dark Green Edition different from the other Finding Paths editions?
All four editions are the same drawing, with every disc and junction in the same place. Dark Green is the only one with dark lines, where Blue, Rose and Grey have pale ones. Its discs are ochre, mauve and deep green, it is printed with a narrow dark border, and it is the edition in which the thin threads of colour running down the central line are easiest to see.

Is Finding Paths, Dark Green Edition signed, and is it a limited edition?
Each print is marked with Alan Pedersen, Alantherock's signature. It is an open edition rather than one of NOKUKO's limited editions, and as a print it does not come with a certificate of authenticity, which NOKUKO issues for original paintings.

Written by NOKUKO.