Canary Islands, Spain
Arch of Wind & Time
A wind-cut arch on the Fuerteventura coast, drawn entirely in pen. Thousands of short strokes build the eroded basalt, with the sea left as bare paper through the opening.
- Medium
- Pen and ink on paper
- Place
- Fuerteventura, Canary Islands
- Artist
- Gerald Allen Knowles
- Paper
- Museum-grade matte, pigment inks
Made to order and shipped worldwide. Sizes and framing options are shown at checkout.
About this drawing
The arch is what is left after the wind has taken everything softer away. Standing under it, the surprise is not the shape but the texture: the basalt is pitted and stringy, closer to something poured than something carved.
That texture is the whole drawing. There is no wash and no colour — only pen, worked in short directional strokes that follow the grain of the rock. Where the stone turns away from the light the strokes cross; where it faces the sun the paper is simply left alone.
The opening was drawn last and deliberately kept empty. A blank sheet behind all that dense mark-making reads as distance, light and sea at once, and any attempt to describe it would have closed the arch up.
It is the most graphic piece in the Fuerteventura work and the one that holds its own in a room with no colour in it at all.
Where this print hangs well
Pure black and white makes this an easy print to place: it works in a monochrome interior, a gallery wall of mixed frames, or a small dark room that needs contrast rather than colour.
Slim black frame, generous white mount. It pairs naturally with Erosion Gate — the same coast, ten minutes further along.
For sizing, framing and light, see the print buying guide.
