Summer: Artist Sleeps

From the seasons series, Heyman's 2010 self-portrait shows the artist asleep — a private state observed by no one, here translated into print. The medium, etching and drypoint without aquatint, gives the image a wholly linear character: hatching builds tone, contour describes the body, and drypoint adds the grainy edge particular to that technique on copper. Without the broad tonal washes of aquatint the print sits closer to drawing than to the more painterly impressions Heyman makes elsewhere in the sequence. The subject — sleep, summer, stillness — contrasts with the active seated postures of his testimony portraits. Within the seasons set this print is stripped down, relying on line alone to render figure and bedding. It inverts the documentary stance Heyman applies to interview subjects: rather than recording another's words and face, the artist depicts himself in a state in which speech and observation have stopped. The image registers as a quiet domestic counterpoint to the political work.