Untitled (two palm trees)

During 1971 Ed Flood produced several prints, (see Smart Museum 2001.215-217, 1995.16.6), featuring his then-favored tropical subject matter. Flood tended towards planographic processes like lithography (literally “stone-writing/drawing”) and the more mechanical technique of screenprinting: the former allowed him the expressive possibility of drawing (to outline and modulate the color areas tonally), and the latter, of applying even, flat color in large areas, as he did in prints such as Smart Museum 2001.210-212 from 1968‒69. For this composition, however, he experimented with hand-coloring techniques as well. (See also 2001.218.) The hand-coloring creates a mood altogether different from the earlier prints, while the thick black outlines of the earlier work give way to less pronounced contours and a darker tonality. A black wash covers the cartoon-like image, its diagonal directionality contributing to the impression of a paradise threatened, even overwhelmed, by wind and water. The framing design circumscribing the central image is also more theatrically and critically inflected, suggesting its imposition can’t contain nature. The theme of artificial confinements of nature resonates with fellow Chicago Imagist Christina Ramberg’s work. Perhaps here is also some continuity with the large-scale sculptures he began to make in the mid-1970s. (See 2001.220.)