Making Sounds - Orange

Companion to Aida's Making Sounds — Apple, this aquatint isolates an orange as a vehicle for tonal study and quiet sensory suggestion. The orange's pebbled rind offers a specific technical opportunity in aquatint: the rosin-dust ground, applied at varying densities, can register a granular surface that distinguishes citrus from the smooth bloom of an apple. Aida likely combined multiple bites with selective burnishing to bring forward the highlights along the curvature of the fruit. The series title's reference to sound — the rasp of peel, perhaps, or the dull resonance of fruit set on a hard surface — extends her recurring concern with imagery that registers more than the eye alone, a sensibility she has tied to her childhood near a water shrine. Within her larger body of work, these still lifes function as small-scale studies in observation, distinct from but adjacent to the atmospheric landscapes for which she is most recognised.