Osvaldo

Osvaldo is one of the veteran artists. He's been drawing for more than 15 years and his work is stunning. He is a very calm and friendly man and a most dedicated plate carver. He's thorough and exact with everything he does. He is currently on leave from his work as maintenance worker at the hospital because of severe back pain. If I understood correctly, his insurance company doesn't have money right now to cover his treatment, so he's been in pain for six weeks and he is limping severly. It sounded like something might happen next week with a doctor's visit in Asunción.

Anyways, I want to write about his art. He is one of the few people who doesn't seem to struggle with the tools and his lines are confident. Both his small plate (birds and trees from earlier post) and his larger piece he did are both successful in the use of black and white space and line.

He has been working very focused on a third piece and stayed as the only one till 5:30pm today to pull a proof. He's understood the advantages of pulling testprints at various stages of the plate, although I fear he may have cut too much white at this point on the last plate so the image disappears a bit. We'll have to wait and see. More pictures to come.

May 18th, update. I was wrong once again fearing Osvaldo's last plate might not work so well. It was the crowning masterpiece of the workshop I'd say. Here are the different proofs of the plate that he pulled throughout the past two days and the final piece.

Right, proof 1; left, proof 2.