Rachel Newling's Exotic Australia

Rachel Newling is creating a name for herself outside of Australia’s Queensland, and is quickly establishing herself as a printmaker who loves Nature, and who enjoys showing us some pretty curious creatures. Her work is detailed, colorful and original in subject. How many other printmakers can you name that do portraits of kangaroos and emus as wonderfully personified as any human portrait artist? There are not many, my friends.

What we see are Newling’s fascination with her environment, and richly textured plants and animals she sees every day. For any of us unfamiliar with seeing these subjects, they are a delight and Newling’s obsessive linear work is quite mesmerizing. Her hand-colored prints exude exoticism and we are left wanting to see more. She has a great respect for the way things look and we get an eye full in every composition.

Rachel Newling was born in Gloucestershire, U.K. She attended art school in London and lived there for several years before moving to Australia. She currently lives in Noosa, on the Queensland Sunshine Coast.

Australia is known for its printmaking heritage, and there have been several prominently known Aussie women printmakers since the beginning of the 20th century. Newling has joined Australia’s current wave of notable inksters we can expect to see great things from this artist. Enjoy the work, comrades.

Public Collections:
Artbank
Australian War Memorial
Cairns Regional Gallery
The City of Sydney
Manly Art Gallery & Museum
The Royal Botanic Gardens
Queens Club Sydney
Trust Sydney
Plus collections in Australia, Canada, Europe, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore and the USA.

The Textual Prints of Steven Ford

Steven Ford’s prints present the viewer with a vision of simultaneous contrasts; complexity and simplicity. I was wowed by the tactile nature of the work. His intricately chosen color palettes have more to do with balance and design than a particular image of person, place or thing, but they blow us away with his references to his print ancestors. The homage is clear to see that he admires the works of both Josef and Anni Albers, and the contemporary master printmaker Karen Kunc. These abstractions glitter and dazzle the eye in a blended print tradition of works on paper and works on fabric.

The textures and dimension created with Ford’s multi-layered images respect the traditions of the vibrant, colorful designer Sonia Delaunay and other artists from the Bauhaus, but there are prints that also have touches of an international South Asian flare. Some of Ford’s pieces have curvilinear elements that reflect the master Indian abstract painter Rama Rao. Then there are pieces that remind me of a Stella, or the multimedia exploded drawings of Mia Pearlman.

All in all, I am intrigued with Ford’s cross section of print history. The works are spectacular to look at and they broaden the dialogue on what is a print. He would appear to be fast rising up the printmaking ladder to grab our attention, which he does with ease. Give these gems a look, folks.

Bio
Steven Ford was born in Indiana in 1964. He studied art at Washington University in St.Louis, MO, and then went to the Tyler School of Art to receive his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1986. In a short period of time his work, namely his prints, have been shown throughout the US, and his work is included in the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Helsinki Design Museum, in Finland.

Exhibitions - selected
2013: Paper Space, Wallingford Community Art Center, Wallingford, PA
2013: Victory for Tyler 2013, Ice Box @ Crane Arts, Philadelphia, PA
2012: Centennial Exhibition, Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE
2011-2012: Ripped: The Allure of Collage, Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, NY
2011-2012: Terra Nova, Racine Art Museum, WI
2010: Construction: New Work by Steven Ford, JAGR Projects, Philadelphia, PA
2010: New Prints: Summer 2010, International Print Center, NYC
2009: New Prints: Spring 2009, International Print Center, NYC
2009-2010: Sculpting Color: Works in Polymer Clay, Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA
2009: Wrought and Crafted: Jewelry and Metalwork 1900-Present, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
2009-2010: Challenging the Chatelaine, Art Alliance, Philadelphia, PA and Helsinki Design Museo, Helsinki, Finland

"All Stars" by Teresa J. Parker debuts at Museo Tecleno MUTE

Greetings to all my inked up comrades.

Pardon my brief online absence as I have been feverishly at work preparing for my first ever museum exhibition. The making of new work is never as arduous as its shipping and anticipated safe arrival to parts far flung. I am pleased to report that four new series of prints and drawings will debut July 12th at the Museo Tecleno MUTE, a suburb of San Salvador, in Santa Tecla. The series for this exhibition are: 1) the ‘Baby Bird Suite’, prints conceived in part from Francisco de Goya's Caprichos prints, about illegal adoptions in Central America, 2) ‘Battered Madonnas’, which debuted in Guatemala in 2012, is about making iconic madonnas out of domestic violence victims, 3) the ‘All Stars’ is a new print series about the growing occurrence of filicide, and 4) ‘Domestic Bliss’ are new drawings tying together the theme of Battered madonnas. Many thanks to my art comrade and friend John Sevigny for including me in this joint exhibition of our works. Sevigny will be showing his now well-known "NOMADS" project, on the subject of migration from Central America through Mexico.

While I am loathe to go into much detail about my own work, I am posting this new project here for your review. (Warning* The subject of this series may be difficult for some readers.)

The ‘All Stars’ project came about as an extension of my long-standing theme relating to women and children. My earlier series, the Battered Madonnas, previously shown in Guatemala and Mexico, discusses in visual form the physical and spiritual scars of domestic violence - a topic not much discussed. My current project “All Stars” also crosses a bridge not often discussed, except in hushed tones and to make one shudder. Filicide is a growing phenomenon, and the alarming number of occurrences in the United States alone is staggering and heart-breaking. It’s a subject I don’t pretend to understand, nor condone, but as a mother and an artist, I feel I must make a statement. The exhibition contains twelve portraits of women charged and convicted of filicide, although I am only displaying ten here.

The nature of madonnas(young mothers) and matriarchs is to nurture and care for their children and their extended families. It is a natural and sacred responsibility that has been in place since the dawn of humankind. Yet, as present global events and situations take their emotional, physical and spiritual toll upon men and women, something essentially human is breaking down. The nature of familial units separate, grow distant and sometimes break apart. No one can conceive how a mother could take the life of her child, but it does happen, and the reasons are varied. This series is a structural look at the faces of these women and caregivers. There is no one thing that speaks to their individual circumstances, rather I chose in these prints to de-personify these subjects, to look at them as objects, yet elements of their personalities came through. I will let you view them without further comment, but it is hoped that you will share your impressions with your colleagues, family and friends.