© Pat Schaverien

Pat Schaverien describes her prints as a combination of etching and aquatint (drypoint and sugarlift); she also creates collographs, enjoying combining and layering different techniques. When etching she draws directly onto the plate using a drypoint needle to score into the metal or bites lines into the plate with acid, using aquatint to mimic the effect of a watercolour wash. Both techniques, as she notes, ‘vary in intensity’ and their effects, as in this work, can be ‘very subtle'. This composition of an empty swimming pool is eerily devoid of human presence, suggested only by the vacant swing hanging over the water at the far end, but the image also plays subtly with lines, grids and the multiplying reflections and shadows cast by the light of the window and the unpeopled urban scene beyond.