Matt Connors 

Dry Heater, 2025

A new print by Matt Connors, titled Dry Heater, is now available in an edition of 30. Published by Utopia Editions, each print is signed and numbered by the artist and presented in an artist-designed frame.

 
In creating his abstractions, Connors often works from such images of objects or objects themselves as a starting point. The compositional source of the present etching is a photograph of the doors of a wood-burning cast-iron stove, which has also served as the basis for drawings and paintings the artist has made, including Impressed Wet Heater (2025). 
 
Working with master printer Sarah Madden, Connors used aquatint to explore the nuance and depth of layered color in the etching process. The print also speaks to his interest in the concept of mise en abyme ("picture within a picture"), as the various color fields overlap and produce a sequence of parallel borders and edges, here furthered by the unique frame selected by the artist that responds chromatically to the green edge of the image composition. 
 
Connors remarks, "I've recently been looking to the artist Man Ray, who is best known for his 'rayographs,' a camera-less photographic image made by placing objects directly onto light-sensitive paper and exposing it to light. Ray's paintings were equally materially direct and at times involved a process of impressing a painted surface onto another surface in order to create an image. The swiftness and material honesty of all of Man Ray's work inspired the method of this approach to the subject in question.”