Hazelwood

Hazelwood is a wooded demesne on the southern shore of Lough Gill in County Sligo, in the same regional catchment as Early's recurring Strandhill subject. Drypoint, in which the plate is incised directly with a steel needle, raises a burr alongside each line that holds extra ink during printing — yielding the velvety, furred mark that is the technique's signature. The medium is well matched to woodland subject matter: dense thickets, layered branches, and the textured bark of mature hardwoods register as soft-edged blacks rather than the cleaner bitten line of etching. Hazelwood thus departs from the harder architectural subjects elsewhere in Early's output — the lighthouses, chimneys, and glasshouse structures — and shows her practice extending into the inland, sylvan landscape of Sligo's lake country. The print sits alongside her other Sligo subjects, reinforcing a regional commitment alongside the Dublin architectural prints and the lighthouse series she has pursued through Graphic Studio Dublin.