Thoughts and proofs from the 'book of hours'

The 'aboutness' of these dry-point etchings,  pages too large to be a book, is embedded in process...an extension of references to text/language from 'the yellow book'...larger in scale,  the figure absent...but holding to narrative...written/mapped/erased and written again/...a palimpsest...the human encoded within the surface of things...its marks and notations...disparate...vague...always something felt...the shifting of place/location...its reflective questioning as trace/fragment.

The 'book of hours' was a common prayer book of illuminated text and illustrations that provided a standard collection of prayers and psalms that could be read at different times of the day...the canonical hours of each day included Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline...each text formed the Book of Hours together with a calender listing the churches feast days (written in red) and the days of ordinary saints (written in black)...the final chapters included 'the office of the dead'...prayers for the dead but also recited daily as a reminder of the readers mortality... because they were a common prayer book owned by the laity pages from the Book of Hours often included family birthdays, christenings, marriages and deaths...foreshadowing the Victorian family Bible/album...these works in progress are a book in title only but it is within such a title'The Book of Hours' frayed from its original context that invokes associations of reflection/but not memory...recovery/but not the past...foretelling/but not the future...sp