Forest Clearing - February 1975

A winter etching set in a cleared section of Pacific Northwest forest, where bare deciduous trunks and evergreen branches frame an open patch of ground. February on Vashon Island would have meant low light, damp earth, and the hard outlines of leafless alder and maple against the persistent green of cedar and Douglas fir. Hansen's etching needle would have allowed close attention to bark texture and the layered overlap of branches characteristic of second-growth Northwest woods. The choice of a clearing — rather than dense canopy — reflects a recurring concern across his catalogue with the marks of human activity on the island landscape: stumps, cut lines, and openings made by logging. The print belongs to a sequence of mid-1970s etchings in which Hansen worked through the immediate Vashon environment as graphic subject, drawing on the linear discipline of his Munich Akademie etching training while staying with the local imagery he had known since childhood.