Golden Daisies

Made in the same year as the numbered "Daisy" sequence, "Golden Daisies" depicts a cluster of yellow-petaled daisies—likely the common oxeye or a related cultivar grown in coastal Washington gardens. The color etching format gave Hansen control over both line and saturated yellow, a hue that is difficult to register cleanly in intaglio printing because of its tendency to grey under heavy plate tone. Multiple-plate registration or selective wiping would have been used to maintain the brightness. Compared with the more isolated single-bloom studies of the "Daisy" series, "Golden Daisies" turns to a grouped composition, allowing Hansen to develop overlapping forms and varied petal angles within one pictorial field. The 1983 floral etchings represent a sustained engagement with kacho-e conventions—frontal flower presentation, neutral or suggested ground, careful seasonal specificity—executed in copperplate intaglio rather than the woodblock medium of his Japanese sources. The print sits alongside contemporaneous work by other Pacific-Northwest printmakers in its candid, garden-derived subject matter.