MARGARET LEES

Posy III

1/Apr/2010 - 23/May/2010

VENUE: Falkner Gallery

Sheep Country III

Fields and Flowers - Linocuts

Posy II

Two new printmaking exhibitions commence at Falkner Gallery on 1 April and will continue until 23 May. Both are concerned with the Australian landscape - vistas, glimpses, close-ups, farmlands, forests and detailed earth markings.
In a much more literal sense, Margaret Lees’ exhibition downstairs also depicts the way humans have responded to the landscape – this time showing cultivated farmlands – crops, animals and domestic flowers. Margaret is a well-known printmaker whose linocuts are highly sought. Line and colour link the depictions of flowers, potato fields and grazing sheep and cows.
The dark backgrounds of the flower works suggest Dutch botanical paintings but a closer look shows that the combination of naturalistic and imagined shapes plus the use of contrasting graded soft and hard colour makes them quite different from the old Dutch works.