At the age of twenty-one, while attending the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, Bryan Hunt first experienced the grandeur and power of the waterfalls of the Yosemite Valley. Visually stimulated by this experience, he began eight years later to translate the image of flowing water into bronze sculptures expressive of natural force and energy. The sculptures suggest much that is not literally represented: the unseen landscape is implied by the negative space surrounding the falls, which can be read as an abstract gestural image as well as a representation of nature.
In the medium of etching Hunt creates “waterfalls” that have a similar ambivalence. The way the ink adheres to the deeply bitten hollows of the plate echoes the sense of turbulent water produced in his sculptures by the roughly worked bronze surfaces. Around the outline of the waterfall’s form, the blank white of the paper evokes in the viewer's mind imagined landscapes.
These large-scale etchings are printed from two plates abutted to form one image. The radically narrow and elongated format resembling an oriental scroll painting emphasizes the sinuous flow of the falling water.
Nancy Green, The Modern Art of the Print, p. 122