Brothers on the Ground

Drypoint is an intaglio process in which the artist scribes lines directly into a copper or zinc plate with a sharp needle, raising a metal burr along each scratch. When inked, the burr retains a heavier deposit that prints as a soft, fuzzy halo around the incised line, giving drypoint its characteristic velvety blacks. The title points to two figures — possibly siblings, possibly figurative companions — positioned low in the picture plane, an arrangement that drypoint suits well because the needle responds to gestural pressure and rewards immediate, sketch-like mark-making. Within May's broader practice, which positions identity and the conventions of artistic production as recurring concerns, the choice of drypoint here aligns with her interest in techniques that preserve the trace of the hand. The plate's burr also wears down across the edition, so each successive impression registers a slightly different state of the image — a quality that complicates ideas of reproducibility and authorship that her wider work interrogates.