Daffodil

A single-flower etching of a daffodil, one of the spring bulbs that bloom across Vashon Island and the wider Puget Sound region. The subject places the print within a kacho-e-adjacent strand of Hansen's work — flower studies that owe an acknowledged debt to Japanese bird-and-flower printmaking while remaining technically rooted in European intaglio. Etching at this scale would have allowed close attention to the trumpet form of the corona, the six radiating tepals, and the strap leaves of the plant, with line weight varied between firm contour and the lighter hatching used for shadow. The 1977 date places it alongside his Iris Landscape of the same year, both belonging to a small group of late-1970s botanical etchings in which Hansen worked single plants against minimal or absent ground. The choice of daffodil — a non-native, garden-introduced bulb — quietly registers the cultivated as well as the wild plant life of the rural island.