Hurvin Anderson | Welcome Series

We are pleased to announce the completion of Hurvin Anderson's Welcome Series, a series of six woodblock and screenprint editions with Durham Press, which began in 2011 and was recently revisited in 2022. All six woodblock and screenprint editions that comprise this series measure 38 x 58 5/8 inches and are printed on Saunders Waterford 425gsm paper, with the exception of Welcome Series: Black and White which is printed on Revere Suede Standard White 300gsm paper. Black and White and Margaritas are released in an edition of 30, Saint Giles and Little Tobago in an edition of 28, and Huevos and Monos in an edition of 20.

Iterative thinking is a constant in artist Hurvin Anderson’s work, a mode of thinking he has extended to Welcome Series. Each edition – Welcome Series: Black and White and Margaritas, as well as the new Monos, Little Tobago, Huevos and Saint Giles – are inspired by scenes from the Caribbean, including his parent’s home country of Jamaica, and Trinidad where Anderson held residency in 2002. The series, which he explores both in painting and in print, is unified by the motif of security gates which are nearly ubiquitous devices used to protect homes and businesses on these islands. For Anderson, the gates he overlays over these bar scenes convey both physical and emotional distance – a feeling of living between two places; of returning to a "homeland" as not only a stranger, but a foreigner.

Color overtakes the scene in Saint Giles and Little Tobago as red radiates from the woodgrain and deep cobalt blue captures our eyes. The gray abstract imagery carried over from the previous prints now floats on top of its surrounding rich hues instead of being subsumed into grayscale. Anderson uses color to distort this repeated structure: planes push forward where they should recede, flatten where they're expected to extend. Even within these two prints depth is manipulated; the black gate and gray wallpaper in Saint Giles expand space backwards, while in Little Tobago the scene is compressed with its newfound red and teal coloring. A distinct sense of depth begins to emerge, but one that makes our eyes linger as we try to understand a space that doesn't quite piece together.

It is not until Margaritas that Anderson fully floods us with color: the sunbathers hinted at in Black and White now recline on yellow sand beneath blue skies, black columns come alive in pinks and blues that make your eyes swim, and the bar shelf is bathed in transparent hues. The Caribbean bar scene has boldly come alive as Welcome Series arrives at the end of its evolution, though still hints at its origin as it maintains the same strong structure and returns to its graphic imagery.