$25.95
9 in stock (can be backordered)
A signed pen-and-ink art book from Dayboro: a bird sketch, a heart, and a handwritten thank-you note to collectors.
In the quiet hours at my studio in Dayboro, Queensland, I sat down with a dip pen, a bottle of ink, and a single sheet of textured paper, and let a bird take shape under my hand. That sketch became the heart of Sweetness and Light, a small signed art book built around two drawings: a bird caught mid-turn, feathers rendered in short, confident strokes, and a hand-inked heart sitting beside a thank-you note written just for the person who opens this page. Outside the window, currawongs were calling from the jacaranda, and something of that morning ended up in the tilt of the bird’s head.
There is nothing rushed in this work. Pen and ink do not forgive hesitation, so every line on the page is a line I meant to make. The bird’s outline holds tension in its shoulders and softness in its underbelly, built from cross-hatching that thickens where the light falls away and thins where it catches. The paper itself has a tooth to it, a faint grain you can feel under a fingertip, and the ink sits into that texture rather than sliding across it. It is a slow medium, and Sweetness and Light was made slowly, over long afternoons when the light through the studio window was doing something worth chasing.
The heart on the facing page is looser, drawn in fewer strokes, almost a doodle beside the discipline of the bird sketch. Underneath it sits a short handwritten note, my own thanks to the people who have followed this work and made it possible to keep making it. That note is part of the artwork, not an afterthought bolted on. It is signed by hand in every copy, which means no two are quite identical, the same way no two mornings in Dayboro look quite the same.
This is a softcover book, twenty pages, printed on archival-quality paper so the ink holds its depth for years rather than fading into the page. It travels well, sits comfortably on a shelf or a coffee table, and rewards a second and third look the way good ink drawings tend to. If you already know my work, this is a companion piece to the pieces you already hold. If this is your first encounter with it, Sweetness and Light is a fair introduction, warm without being sentimental, precise without being cold, and made by hand from start to finish in a small studio south of Dayboro’s main street.
Art Book Signed by Artist: Sweetness and Light
