Tossing Charlie into the Sky

This aquatint depicts the familiar gesture of a child being lifted and thrown lightly upward — Charlie suggesting a specific subject, possibly a member of Aida's family or social circle. The composition almost certainly relies on a strong vertical movement, with the figure suspended against an open ground that aquatint can render as a continuous tonal expanse. Aida's handling of the medium typically emphasises atmosphere over hard contour, and a sky bitten in graduated tones would lend the image a sense of suspension — the subject held momentarily airborne. Such intimate, family-scale subjects appear intermittently across her catalogue alongside her landscape and water prints, indicating a printmaker who moves between public and private subject matter while maintaining a consistent tonal vocabulary. The work reflects Aida's London-based practice, in which her training at Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku is filtered through the intaglio traditions she encountered at the Royal College of Art.