Esther Medir: Etchings of an Intimate Landscape -

Esther Medir

Etchings of an Intimate Landscape

“Printmaking is poetry without words.”

– Joan Miró

Esther Medir (born 1972, Barcelona) is an artist who employs etching as a means of articulating her personal vision of the natural world. Through this meticulous medium, she translates the landscapes she encounters into intimate visual narratives, weaving them together with reflections on extrordinary nature, human journeys and paths.

These interwoven connections are expressed through abstract elements—principally stains, lines, and fields of color—which serve as both emotional undercurrents and structural guides within her compositions. Esther Medir is represented by the Gallery Paul Prouté in Paris.

Encouraged by her father, who believed it would offer her stability and a promising future, Esther initially pursued a degree in law at university. Yet even then, her temperament leaned elsewhere. She was deeply contemplative, drawn to writing, reflection, and quiet observation. With a gentle smile during our interview, she recalled the brief period she spent working in a law office. “Those were the two worst months of my life,” she admitted candidly.

From a young age, Esther was surrounded by the creative pulse of her family, who owned a textile factory and were immersed in the world of fashion. Artistic impulses were woven into her everyday life—through books, travels, and the family’s personal collections—nurturing an early appreciation for beauty and craft. The city of Florence marked her first profound encounter with art, sparking a transformation. Inspired and determined, she shifted her path, dedicating three years to formal art studies, ultimately finding her voice in etching, a medium through which she could explore and express her intimate visions of the world. “Etching is an extraordinary, cartographic technique, full of endless possibilities—you never get bored. It’s a mirror of sorts: you work on the reverse, often on metal, and the image emerges in unexpected ways. I’ve always admired how masters like Rembrandt and Goya mastered this art; their work shows the incredible depth and expressiveness etching can achieve“, explains Esther.

The etching technique, as well as drypring or aquatint are expanded versions of printmaking, a technique that has its roots in intaglio process, where the image is incised into a metal mould and later transferred onto paper through the controlled pressure of the press. Etching offers the artist a precise control over line and depth through the action of acid, while aquatint brings tonal fields and gentle gradations. During inking, variations in pressure, the density of the ink, and the paper’s humidity create subtle differences in each impression, ensuring that every print emerges as a singular, unique work.

In Esther’s artistic approach, meaning does not arise from the literal presence of things, but from their transformation. It is through the abstraction of a concrete that the work begins to breathe, to detach itself from the visible and enter the realm of resonance. What is given becomes reimagined; what is seen becomes felt.

Sometimes, it is something as fleeting as a shadow cast by a window that ignites the process — a quiet reflection trembling on a wall, an ephemeral trace of light and form. In that subtle encounter between presence and disappearance, a new creative journey unfolds. The magic operates withing the process iteself, like in Esther’s book and series of prints Mare Frigories (Sea of Cold), inspired by the 1.400 km wide lunar sea located in the norther part of the moon.

Mare Frigoris art series is a result of plates that have oxidized in the garden for several months in humidity. The pates have then been inked and the composition was the final stage of the process. Nature in its abstraction is the main preoccupation in the artist’s framework-she observes, photographs and contemplates each object before the execution, meaning that there is almost a scientific approach proceeding each work, like in the series La Vendimia (Vineyard) dedicated to the evolution of vineyards through different seasons.

In my personally favourite series Epigrafia Opuesta, one can observe how etching and geometrical expression go perfectly hand in hand. With its ability to render crisp lines, precise forms, and intricate, repeating patterns, etching becomes a medium perfectly attuned to exploring architectural visions, structural harmonies, and abstract worlds. This particular series was inspired by Esther’s trip to Marrakech, and the impressive, absolutely contrasted light of the city.

“I admire Paul Klee, and I read that he experienced the same response to the light in Marrakech as I did. I was captivated by the geometric architecture of rectangles within rectangles and the profound, contemplative effect it created. The colors within these forms were striking, imbued with a deep, resonant intensity” explains the artist.

In Huellas Infinitas (Infinite Footprints), Esther Medir transforms the line into a mirror of the human journey — fragile yet resilient, fleeting yet enduring. Each stroke carries a sense of movement, echoing the footprints we leave behind and the subtle marks that life impresses upon us. Through her exploration, the line becomes a living trace of existence, meandering, breaking, fading, and reemerging in search of something beyond the visible.

Against this mutable line, blocks of solid color appear — grounded, deliberate, and radically opposed to the stroke’s fluidity. These color fields evoke the “other side,” the world around us, at once familiar and foreign, inviting yet formidable. The interplay between line and color reflects the dualities of human experience, hinting at the vertigo of the infinite, the quiet mystery beyond comprehension, and the subtle presence of a spiritual dimension.

Esther Medir found inspiration for Infinite Footprints in the cuneiform script, the world’s earliest known writing system, developed by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia around 3500–3200 BCE. Born in Uruk as a practical tool for trade and administration, cuneiform began as simple pictographs pressed into wet clay with a stylus, later evolving to convey complex sounds and language. These wedge-shaped marks are more than historical symbols — they embody the human impulse to leave traces, to record presence and memory, and to transform the ephemeral into something enduring. In Infinite Footprints, this resonance between ancient script and contemporary etching echoes the artist’s exploration of movement, mark-making, and the delicate record of life itself.

The series invites reflection on our own paths, on the traces we leave along the way, and on a destiny that, though unseen, glimmers like a beacon in the darkness. Through mixed media, Medir captures this ephemeral yet eternal essence — a quest without end, yet complete in its very pursuit that can be translated into pursuit of the truth.

For Esther truthfulness is what gives the ultimate value to art, and is equivalent to beauty. As she says: “For me, beauty is inseparable from truth. I am drawn to authenticity and reject anything artificial. Lucian Freud, whom I greatly admire, is renowned for his intense, brutal portrayals of the human form — works that I find magnificent precisely because they are truthful. True beauty in art, to me, emerges when the artist invests their entire body, mind, and spirit into the work, allowing their presence to resonate through every mark and gesture.”

With the same logic, Esther defines a true artist: “A good artist creates something original, never a copy. An artist becomes great only when being authentic — fully engaged in hiswork with mind, body, and soul — and willing to take risks in the pursuit of his vision.”

More about the work of Esther Medir:

https://www.esthermedir.com

Instagram: @esthermedir

Esther Medir

Etchings of an Intimate Landscape

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Etchings of an Intimate Landscape

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