Hilary Pecis, Geraniums and Camellias, Crown Point Press
Hilary Pecis, Geraniums and Camellias, color aquatint with sugar lift aquatint, 24½ x 19¾ inches, edition 30, published by Crown Point Press and printed by Emily York, 2025.
November 7, 2025 - January 7, 2026
By Kelly Jean Egan
Hilary Pecis’s current exhibition at Crown Point Press brings forward two newly realized intaglio prints, Lemons and Camellias and Geraniums and Camellias, and places them in dialogue with a carefully selected group of works from the press’s archive. Pecis is widely known for paintings that revel in the visual richness of everyday life. Crowded still lifes, overgrown plant groupings, and interiors packed with objects appear again and again in her work, each rendered with an eye for color, pattern, and compositional balance. Her paintings transform the familiar into something heightened and attentive, offering a sense of abundance that feels both intimate and deliberate.
Hilary Pecis, Lemons and Camellias, color aquatint and sugar lift aquatint, 24½ x 19¾ inches, edition 30, published by Crown Point Press and printed by Emily York, 2025.
Crown Point Press has long been a place where painters come to test themselves against the discipline of printmaking. The press’s history is built on close collaborations that allow artists to translate their visual instincts into the precise language of etching and aquatint. For Pecis, this meant stepping into a process that requires planning, patience, and trust. Unlike painting, where revision can be immediate and intuitive, intaglio demands foresight and commitment. Working closely with Crown Point’s master printers, Pecis learned to build her images through plates, layering, and tonal calibration. The result is not a departure from her practice, but an expansion of it, one that sharpens her sense of structure and surface.
In addition to presenting her own work, Pecis took on a curatorial role within the exhibition. She selected a group of prints from the Crown Point archive to be shown alongside her new etchings. The artists included are Tomma Abts, Darren Almond, Mamma Andersson, Robert Bechtle, William Brice, Peter Doig, Jane Freilicher, Pia Fries, Tom Holland, Alex Katz, Robert Kushner, Judy Pfaff, Amy Sillman, Pat Steir, and William T. Wiley. While varied in approach, these artists share a deep engagement with color as a driving compositional force. Pecis’s selections feel intuitive rather than academic. She brings together artists who use color to shape space, mood, and rhythm, creating a quiet conversation across generations of printmakers. The gesture situates her work within Crown Point’s broader history while also revealing her own visual affinities.
William Brice, Untitled #4 (Pattern), color soft ground etching with aquatint, 6 x 8 inches, edition 25, published by Crown Point Press and printed by Hidekatsu Takada, 1985.
Mamma Andersson, Abandoned, color spit bite and sugar lift aquatints with aquatint and soft ground etching, 24¼ x 36 inches, edition 40, published by Crown Point Press and printed by Emily York, 2008.
Tomma Abts, Untitled (wavy line), color aquatint, 22¾ x 16¾ inches, edition 20, published by Crown Point Press and printed by Emily York, 2015
The exhibition also includes an impressive painting by Pecis titled Blue Still Life (36 × 48 inches), which she loaned to the press. The painting served as an important point of reference during the development of the prints. Its presence offers viewers a clear sense of how Pecis’s painted language translates into print, though the exhibition remains firmly centered on the new etchings.
Hilary Pecis, Blue Still Life, acrylic on linen, 32 x 42 inches, 2021.
What makes Lemons and Camellias and Geraniums and Camellias particularly compelling is how seamlessly they preserve Pecis’s unmistakable visual voice while embracing the complexity of intaglio. Both prints are technically demanding. Geraniums and Camellias employs seven plates and multiple color passes using the à la poupée technique, allowing several colors to be applied to a single plate in a single printing. Lemons and Camellias relies heavily on sugar lift aquatint to achieve its gestural line quality and sense of movement. The result is a surface richness that echoes the tactile pleasures of her paintings, with velvety shadows, crisp edges, and layered color fields, all without sacrificing clarity. Despite the labor involved, the compositions feel buoyant and confident, guided by Pecis’s steady sense of rhythm and balance.
In Lemons and Camellias, fruiting branches and winter blossoms intertwine so densely that distinctions begin to blur. The composition feels generous and slightly unruly, yet carefully held together by color relationships and structure. Bright yellows and saturated reds press forward against darker foliage, creating a dynamic sense of depth. Geraniums and Camellias shifts the mood toward something quieter and more contemplative. Deep greens and blacks anchor the image, while the geranium blossoms punctuate the space with measured intensity. The tonal depth rewards close looking and reveals itself gradually.
Photo: Hilary Pecis in the Crown Point studio, 2025, courtesy of Crown Point Press.
Together, these prints mark an important moment in Pecis’s practice. They demonstrate her ability to absorb a demanding process and use it in service of her own vision. Rather than feeling like a detour, the works suggest an ongoing curiosity and a desire to continue evolving. The exhibition is on view at Crown Point Press from November 7, 2025 through January 7, 2026. With the inclusion of Pecis’s new prints, her thoughtful curatorial selections, and Blue Still Life, the show offers a layered and compelling view of an artist expanding her vocabulary while remaining firmly rooted in what she does best.
