Image above: Danielle Creenaune Quadern de Pedra 4 2019 stone lithograph and chine collé edition 10 26cm x 32.5cm
Congratulations to Danielle Creenaune, who has been selected as a finalist in the Kangaroo Valley Art Prize for her beautiful work, Quadern de Pedra 4.
Kangaroo Valley Art Prize showcases emerging and established contemporary Australian artists from NSW and across Australia. Works include painting, printmaking, digital, photographic and video art, textile and fabric art, multi-media and new media. All finalists are being exhibited over the October long-weekend (Friday 2 October – Monday 5 October 2020) in the heritage Kangaroo Valley Hall. The Hall is transformed for the occasion into a professional art gallery. Danielle’s Quadern de Pedra 8 has also been selected as a semi-finalist, and will be exhibited online.
Quadern de Pedra is a series created over the duration of 2018 – 2020. A ‘Quadern’ in Catalan is a booklet and ‘Pedra’ means stone, thus translating to a ‘booklet of stone.’ This series presents landscapes as pages in stone; each page exists as a poem of our human experience with nature, history and geology.
‘I began working on this series before leaving Barcelona, taking visual notes from my last journeys into the Catalan Pyrenees, a pivotal place and inspiration for my work over the last 18 years. In this landscape, I feel a sense of meditation and also intense energy. As with many of my works I feel there are opposing forces at play, balancing the complex and the simple, the sensitive and the bold, intimacy and grandeur, the inside world of personal sentiments and the outside world of nature’s rawness. I hope to continue the series based on Australian landscapes and in a way chart the transition back to this familiar landscape.’ – Danielle Creenaune.
Image above: Danielle Creenaune Quadern de Pedra 8 2019 stone lithograph and chine collé edition 10 26cm x 32.5cm
The technique is chine collé and stone lithography. Chine collé is a technique whereby the image is printed onto a thin Japanese paper and pasted to a heavier backing paper. In stone lithography, the image is drawn onto a piece of Bavarian limestone. Lithography is based on the principle that the drawn image is grease-loving and the limestone is stone is water-loving, hence they repel each other. The drawing is created directly onto the stone, processed and then when printing, the stone is kept damp. The drawn areas accept ink while the humid non-image areas repel it. The image is printed by hand and run through a manual Lithography printing press. The delicate wash effects are called ‘reticulation’ and this is created by the lithographic drawing ink called tusche. It contains grease and when mixed with water it dries producing this effect.
For more information, and to view the exhibition online click here.