While working with master printmaker Ian Wilkinson at the Limberhurst Press making the silkscreen prints ‘Einstein’ and ‘Mater Dolorosa’, Chris Gollon was also kindly given 3 etching plates to occupy him. Although he had made etchings once before at the Glasgow Print Studio in 1996 (‘The Whisper’ I & II), they were made with aquatint, involved cross hatching, and one edition was hand-coloured. However, the etchings he was making this time were hard-ground, single-line etchings, which meant there was no going back on a line without thickening it and no stopping once a line was started. Chris Gollon’s consummate skill as a draughtsman was tested, but he produced three beautifully lyrical single-line etchings, which were then printed on Arches Crème paper.

Art historian Tamsin Pickeral praises these three editions in her 2010 biography of Chris Gollon ‘Humanity in Art’: “a series of three magnificent single-line, hard-ground etchings made at the Limberhurst Press in Cambridgeshire, in 2005. These three single-line etchings, The Magdalene, Sleeping Woman and Girl Praying, which form the apotheosis of his prints to date, reflect a look back to his linear roots and demonstrate with unarguable bluntness the technical skill of the artist.”