Hope, Limited Edition by Alantherock: Roots in the Air

Hope by Alantherock is a limited edition art print of a bare tree rising out of a solid black mass, on a ground the colour of warm sand. Every branch in it is drawn open enough to see the paper through. The one shape you cannot see into is the dark thing it grows out of.

Hope by Alan Pedersen, Alantherock is a mixed media limited edition art print. A dense black mass at the base sends up two green stems and a wide branching network in red, teal and pale blue. It is limited to 500 signed and numbered copies, printed on Fine Art Freja paper at 265 g in two sizes.

The dark is the only shape you cannot see into

Everything that grows in this picture is drawn open, and the mass at its base is not. The branching divides and divides until the strokes are hair thin, with warm sand paper showing between every fork. There is no shading anywhere in it and nothing is filled in. You read the canopy the way you read a diagram.

The mass at the bottom is the opposite of that. It is painted rather than drawn, laid down with a loaded brush and dragged out at the edges into bristles, with flecks thrown clear of it on both sides and one thin run of ink going straight down beneath. A pale keyline follows its top edge where the green stem enters, so the join between the painted part and the drawn part is the one place in the picture that has been tidied up.

And it sits exactly where roots would be. There is no ground here. No horizon, no soil line, no pot, no shadow, nothing for the tree to stand on. What is normally hidden is the only part of this plant with any body to it, and what is normally visible has been drawn as fine open line.

The product page says hope can sprout from the darkest roots. The picture takes that at its word and then goes one step further. It leaves the dark opaque and gives every legible, dividing, countable line to the part that is growing.

A trunk that grows past everything it carries

The two green stems rise past the last of their own branches and end in bare points, carrying nothing. Lower down they behave like a trunk, throwing off branches at clean junctions that spread outward in dark teal, deep red, coral and pale blue. Higher up they simply continue. Each stem narrows to a point and stops in open paper with nothing on it.

There is not one leaf in the drawing. No bud, no blossom, no fruit, nothing anywhere in the canopy that reads as foliage. What colour the tree has is in the line itself, because the branches are drawn in red and teal and pale blue rather than in a single ink. The colour is in the wood rather than on it.

The only solid colour in the upper half of the sheet sits out past the branch tips. Four small red marks and one blue one, each with a fan of spray in its own colour beside it, and not one of them touching a branch. They are painted, like the mass at the bottom, rather than drawn like everything between them. Whatever they are, they have not landed.

Finding Paths, Blue Edition by Alantherock runs a branching network of the same kind across a slate blue ground, built from the same mixture of acrylic, drawing, texture and photographs. It is the nearest thing in the catalogue to this drawing's hand, and a useful place to see how differently the same instinct behaves when there is no trunk holding it together.

Five hundred prints, and a number on every one

Hope is limited to 500 copies, and it is one of only eight limited editions NOKUKO holds. Every print carries its number, written as 1/500, in the bottom right corner beside Alan Pedersen's signature. Both are in the same pale ink and both are printed as part of the sheet, so the number sits inside the picture rather than on a label behind it.

The convention is not new for him. When the Listen prints were first shown in 2020 they were marked the same way, signature and number together, at 1/300. What changes here is the count and the subject. A limited edition is a decision made once, before the first sheet is pulled, and it is a quiet thing to say about a picture named Hope.

No certificate of authenticity is issued with it. Certificates accompany original works rather than prints, and a limited edition carries its proof on its face instead. The product page calls this an exclusive print, and the limitation is what that word is doing.

Two sizes are offered, 30x40 cm and 50x70 cm, both on Fine Art Freja paper at 265 g. The composition is the same in each, with the tree held in the upper two thirds of the sheet and a good deal of bare ground left below the black.

A tree drawn with no leaves on it is usually a picture about winter. This one is warm the whole way through. The ground is the colour of skin, the branches are red and blue and teal, and the only cold thing in it is the mass at the bottom holding everything else up.

That is a more honest picture of hope than a bloom would have been. It puts the weight at the base, keeps the growing part open, and leaves the colour still in the air.

About Hope, Limited Edition

What paper is Hope printed on?
It is printed on Fine Art Freja paper at 265 g, the heavier art paper NOKUKO uses for art prints. The original was built from acrylic paint, drawing, textures, photographs and graphic elements, and the paper is chosen to hold the warm sand ground and the density of the black. The frame shown in the product images is for illustration and is not included.

What sizes does Hope come in?
Two sizes, 30x40 cm and 50x70 cm. Both hold the same composition, with the tree set in the upper two thirds of the sheet and the dark mass low and central.

Does Hope come in different colourways or editions?
No. There is one version of this print, offered in the two sizes. The signature and the edition number sit in the bottom right corner of every copy, printed as part of the sheet.

Is Hope a limited edition, is it signed, and does it come with a certificate?
Yes, yes and no. Hope is limited to 500 copies and is one of only eight limited editions NOKUKO holds. Each print is signed by Alan Pedersen and marked with its number, written as 1/500. No certificate of authenticity is issued, because certificates accompany original works rather than prints. A limited edition carries its proof on the sheet instead, in the mark, the signature and the number.

Written by NOKUKO.