Tracey Emin British, 1963
Bird on a Wing after DB, 2018
Etching on paper
Signed by the artist in pencil, lower right on recto
Annotated in pencil, lower right on recto
Signed by the artist in pencil, lower right on recto
Annotated in pencil, lower right on recto
46 x 45 cm
© Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin’s Bird on a Wing (2018) exemplifies her synthesis of emotional candour and poetic minimalism through etching. Executed in a spectral blue, the work depicts a solitary jay mid-flight,...
Tracey Emin’s Bird on a Wing (2018) exemplifies her synthesis of emotional candour and poetic minimalism through etching.
Executed in a spectral blue, the work depicts a solitary jay mid-flight, rendered with gestural, tremulous lines that evoke movement. The composition’s economy of form—a wiry contour against space—belies its emotional density, typical of Emin’s expression of complex psychological states into visual metaphors.
The bird, which has been a recurring motif in her oeuvre since the 1990s, functions here as a dual symbol: its delicate form speaks to human vulnerability, while its airborne trajectory signals resilience.
This etching’s technical restraint—eschewing the text elements of earlier works—marks a maturation toward distilled visual lyricism while maintaining the raw confessional impulse that defines her contributions to contemporary art.
Executed in a spectral blue, the work depicts a solitary jay mid-flight, rendered with gestural, tremulous lines that evoke movement. The composition’s economy of form—a wiry contour against space—belies its emotional density, typical of Emin’s expression of complex psychological states into visual metaphors.
The bird, which has been a recurring motif in her oeuvre since the 1990s, functions here as a dual symbol: its delicate form speaks to human vulnerability, while its airborne trajectory signals resilience.
This etching’s technical restraint—eschewing the text elements of earlier works—marks a maturation toward distilled visual lyricism while maintaining the raw confessional impulse that defines her contributions to contemporary art.