Edith Schmid

I was born on the shores of Lake Constance in Switzerland in 1957 into a pleasantly ordinary family. Childhood and schooling went smoothly. Around the age of 11, I received a few tubes of water paint. And this gift revealed and triggered a lively curiosity and interest in the plastic arts. In the Libraries I gradually discovered art books, and the desire to retire with my paints and brushes became more and more frequent. All kinds of supports were suitable for my brushstrokes. The result was always in the field of abstract art. I remember the game of transforming and interpreting readings in color, pictorially. Rarely did I come close to drawing. On the other hand, the world of prints showed a certain attraction. When I expressed the desire to return to Fine Arts I met a firm and definitive parental resistance.

It was only in 1983, when I moved to the south of France, that I met the opportunity to enter as a "free student" at the engraving workshop of the Beaux-Arts in Montpellier. It was an opportunity to learn the different techniques of printmaking, and soon I devoted myself solely to the practice of etching. The prize and the scholarship of Languedoc-Roussillon allowed me to acquire a press and a first workshop was created in Ganges in the Hérault.

Since then, engraving has never let go of me. Press and acid have become daily accomplices. For a long time the intervention on the plate, the moment of the bite has become the central moment of my creation. The engraved plate has a strength and a visual and aesthetic impact stronger than its prints, not all models end up in prints. Both, plates or prints, can become, in the same way, an expression of my work.