These plates, numbering fifteen including vignettes, were done for a specific text, written by a friend. In them I explored a few new wrinkles -- secrets? -- happily appreciated by the author. Much of this work, and etchings that follow, have to do with chance; for so many things can happen to a copper plate, depending on how you treat it, that implications are myriad. The book is all about a seaside encounter, very erotic. Hence the watery look of the etchings.

    –from Dorothea Tanning: Hail Delirium! A Catalogue Raisonné of the Artist’s Illustrated Books and Prints, 1942-1991, New York: The New York Public Library, 1992, p. 97.