Christmas 1993

A landscape etching dated to 1993, "Christmas" likely depicts a winter Vashon Island scene around the December holiday—possibly a rural structure under snow, a stand of evergreens, or a domestic exterior with seasonal markers. As a black-line intaglio without color, the print depends on hatching, aquatint, and the differential bite of the etched line to convey the muted tonal range of a Pacific-Northwest winter, where snow is intermittent and the dominant atmosphere is wet grey. Hansen made several dated holiday or seasonal etchings during the 1990s, a practice with parallels in Edo-period surimono, the privately commissioned woodblock prints exchanged at New Year and other occasions. The print extends the seasonal-marker structure visible in earlier works such as "Early Spring," locating the image within a yearly cycle rather than a single occasion. Its modesty of scale and incident is consistent with Hansen's late landscape practice, which favored quiet, unspectacular Vashon vignettes over panoramic statement.