Perdicia

The title appears to play on Perdix, the partridge genus, and on Perdita, the lost-and-found heroine of Shakespeare's Winter's Tale, suggesting a small ground-bird subject treated with the gentle narrative inflection that runs through Imazu's work. Etched line carries the bird's plumage pattern in fine cross-hatched and stippled passages, while aquatint establishes the tonal field around it — a low horizon, a patch of grass, or an enveloping dark — the contrast between drawn line and bitten tone organising the image. Within her output the print sits alongside other 2019 intaglios of single creatures isolated against atmospheric grounds, and continues her habit of borrowing names from literature and folklore so that the modest backyard subject takes on the bearing of a character rather than a specimen.