There is a scratch on one of my zinc plates, maybe four centimetres, running diagonally through what should be the quiet part of the image. It happened in 2019 in a shared studio in Kreuzberg where someone had left a scraper on my bench. Five years of proofing later and I still aquatint around it. I have redrawn the composition twice to accommodate it.

The annoying thing is I know exactly why. Every print from this plate is different only in the inking, and the scratch is the one mark that exists in every single one. It is the closest thing I have to a signature that I did not choose. There is something in that which I cannot let go of, and also I suspect it is just stubbornness dressed as theory. My edition is 30 and I am maybe 11 in. Some days I think the honest thing would be to file the plate down and start again. Other days I think the whole piece is about that line.

I had a supervisor at the Slade who would have told me immediately which of those two it is. I have not asked anyone. That is probably its own answer.