Purchasing

December 2009 Exhibitions

First Thursday reception: December 3, 6-8pm

Mortensen. Autumn Sunset, 1979. Reduction woodcut. Edition of 130. 22 x 30 inches.

Gorden Mortensen Reduction Woodcuts, 1974-1983

Gordon Mortensen (b. 1938, American) is one of the best known reduction woodcut print artists working in the U.S today. He works from watercolor studies to understand the color dynamics needed for the woodcut. The artist uses up to sixty-four colors and takes as long as three months to create the woodblock image. Although the final outcome has a painterly feel, it is unmistakably a woodcut with rich layered colors and wood grain textures. His early images mostly represent the upper Midwest landscape, and areas around where he lived in North Dakota. His color preferences in these early works is more muted compared to the brighter colors he favors to present his current home in California.

• View previous work by Mortensen

Dijkstra. Looner Diep, 2009. Reduction woodcut. Edition of 34. 12-1/2 x 27-1/2 inches.

Siemen Dijkstra Recente Houtsneden (Recent Woodcuts)

Siemen Dijkstra’s (b. 1968, Dutch) recent large reduction woodcuts, on view at Davidson Galleries during the months of December and January, reveal the artist’s mastery of the process and his passion for the lowland vistas of his home province, Drenthe, in the Netherlands. It is a land of woods, fens and moors. He likens the cutting of the blocks and layered printings, to his experience of the landscape. Dijkstra sees a relationship between the low relief surfaces of the woodcut and the flat landscapes he lives with.

The reduction woodcut process uses the same block of wood over and over, unlike the traditional woodcut method that employs separate blocks for each color. The artist cuts and prints the woodblock in stages, printing a different color on the same sheet of paper after each cutting. As successive areas of the block are cut away (reduced, hence reduction woodcut), inked and printed, the image builds in subtlety and complexity. Dijkstra and Mortensen both make effective use of the process to express their respective landscapes. Through January 30, 2010.

Keinen. Chrysanthemum, Chestnut Mannikin. Color woodblock, 1891. Oban diptych, 12-1/2 x 8-3/4 inches each.

Imao Keinen Kacho Album: the Four Seasons

Kacho-ga, or “bird and flower pictures,” are among the most enduring and popular subjects of Japanese prints. Active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, print artist Imao Keinen’s most celebrated work was his four volume set Keinen Kacho Gafu (Bird and Flower Album by Keinen) published in 1891. Keinen Kacho Gafu is a collection of Japanese bird and plant portraits illustrating over 100 different birds in carefully selected, seasonal settings. Davidson Galleries is proud to present an exhibition of the entire series of Keinen’s Bird and Flower Album through December 24.

• View Kacho-Ga works

We are closed December 25 & 26 and January 1 & 2.
Open by appointment Dec 29 - 31.

The Golem project is a suite of twenty etchings by Matt Rebholz, inspired by the tale of the Frankenstein-esque figure from Jewish folklore. Perhaps the best known of the Jewish legends, the Golem is an automaton, usually made from mud or clay and created through an intense and systematic mystical process. In Hebrew, the word golem refers to something unformed and imperfect, and implies a body without a soul. The narrative arc of the prints is a loose re-imagining of the 1915 Gustav Meyrink novel Der Golem, in which the title character wanders the streets of a corrupt and ruined city, blissfully unaware that he is a malfunctioning meat robot and not truly a man.

The prints are organized in a theatrical fashion, the spaces constructed as though they were the sets of a stage play and the players carefully arranged within them. Often the environments become more important than the figures, sometimes to their ultimate exclusion. These elements conspire to form a series of intimate, allegorical vignettes pregnant with obscenity and metaphor. The grotesque tableaux of The Golem serve as a polluted and uneasy dreamscape, peopled by a cast of damaged characters eager to do each other harm. Within this environment, the Golem himself can be read as a metaphor for humanity adrift in an absurd and dystopian world. As The Golem project ran its course, it deviated significantly from Meyrink’s original narrative, becoming less and less concerned with the original storyline. As it metastasized and evolved thematically, the imagery became increasingly concerned with my own thoughts about contemporary society and the manifestations of consumption, ingestion and expulsion within it.

View the entire series and additional work by the artist.

Showing November 6-28, 2009

First Thursday reception: November 5, 6-8pm

Robert E. Marx Recent Paintings

Abigail’s Reverie, 2009. Oil on linen. 42 x 34 inches.

Rochester artist Robert E. Marx’s recent paintings on linen are rich and varied. Small to medium in size, these thoughtful images address the “exclusivity of the institutions of church and state, abuse of both spouse and child, and our own and others’ personal fears and insecurities.” The distended and sometimes bound figures he portrays wear symbols of subjugation such as masks, chains, hats that cover ears and eyes, and clothing that restricts movement. Marx mourns the autonomy humans give up and sees many people as scared, willing pawns. Some of his figures gaze out with a hollowness, a vessel drained of heavy emotion. Others challenge the viewer with an intriguing ambiguity of intent.

Marx’s painting process is fluid; it involves a constant reworking of his subject and his surface, painting and completely repainting each successive layer. The result is a subtle but complex surface where line and color is animated by the barely-visible underpainting. Marx works with a paintbrush thick with oil but employs crisp lines. He often works into the wet paint by etching with metal stamps or drawing with a sharp point.

Marx’s long and illustrious career includes recognition as a master printmaker, an illustrator of more than a dozen books, a distinguished professor of art, and a Fullbright scholar. He has had over 40 solo exhibitions of his prints, sculptures, and paintings around the world. His work is included in the permanent collections of numerous public and private institutions including the Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Corcoran Gallery, National Museum of American Art, Dallas Museum, Los Angeles County Museum, Philadelphia Museum, Whitney Museum, and the Seattle Art Museum.

View previous work by the artist.

Jonelle Johnson New Works

Finger Printed Circular, 2009. Intaglio. 12 x 24 inches.

Northwest print artist Jonelle Johnson’s new body of monotypes and intaglio prints continue the artist’s interest in pairing and grouping images in a way that reveals contrasting and harmonious relationships. Johnson does not attempt to deliver a literal, didactic message, but prefers to see her work as vehicles to transmit feelings and ideas. Recurring images, which are a part of the artist’s daily life, include boats, birds, and botanical shapes. Also included in this body of work are figurative images, a new area of interest for the artist.

Johnson uses intaglio and monotype printmaking methods because of the unexpected results that can occur. These “surprises” inspire the artist to explore new avenues and enhance the dialogue between the artist and the printed image. The unique intaglio process that Johnson has developed gives her the ability to improvise and adjust gestural elements when making the plates. With her monotype method the artist layers colors until the image finds resolution.

Jonelle Johnson is a native of Washington State. She received her MFA in Printmaking at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu HI. This is Johnson’s fifth exhibition at Davidson Galleries.

View previous work by the artist.

Catalog 74, featuring over 200 original antique, modern and contemporary works, is now available in both printed and PDF formats.

• Download PDF (16.5Mb)

To be notified of future online catalog releases, and ensure your uninterrupted access to the newest acquisitions to our inventory, sign up for our mailing list:

If you would like to receive printed catalogs by mail, annual subscriptions are available for $10 per year, deductible from your first catalog purchase. Please contact the gallery for details.

Our Antique Print Department recently added a collection of prints by Bernhard Epple to the inventory.

Bernhard Epple was a German printmaker and painter who spent most of his career teaching art at various schools including the University of Heidelberg and and the Kurfürst-Friedrich Gymnasium in Heidelberg.  He is best known for his elaborate, ambitious etchings and engravings that incorporate elements of fantastic realism with geometric abstraction and an innovative, experimental approach to materials and ideas.

Visit the new Bernhard Epple artist page for more work.

Next week, Museum of Northwest Art unveils Representing Abstraction, an exhibition of five contemporary local painters, including Davidson Galleries artist Mary Iverson.

Mary Iverson. Waterway 2, 2008. Oil and ink on canvas. 48 x 72 inches.

From the press release:

Five Northwest artists combine the abstract and the representational with very different results. Three of the artists’ paintings relate to three-dimensional objects also shown in the exhibition: Mary Iverson and Margie Livingston work from handmade models to create their abstract structures on canvas, while John Keppelman’s early sculptures prefigure his current paintings. Iverson depicts landscapes beset by cargo containers—abstract forms arranged along gridlines that stretch into and along the horizon of otherwise pristine landscapes. Livingston faithfully portrays light, space, and form from direct observation, and draws from the essence of each a pure abstraction. John Keppelman conveys multiple narratives in his figurative paintings, folding space in the same way he conceived and constructed his abstract wall sculptures. The other two artists in the exhibition represent landscapes in the abstract, from distinct vantage points: Philip Govedare paints the earth from above, abstracting the terrain with line, color and perspective, and Kelly Neidig portrays movement through landscape, distilling the view with bold bands of color.

The exhibition opens Saturday, October 10, from 2-5 pm, and continues through January 3, 2010.
For more information, visit MoNA’s upcoming exhibitions page.

We just added a new page to our website, celebrating the work of renowned print artist Sadao Watanabe.

One of the most successful Japanese artists of the late 20th century, Watanabe is known for his stylized stencil prints of Biblical subjects. His work is of two types: large, hand-numbered Momigami prints on colored, crinkled paper and smaller Washi prints, printed in unnumbered editions.

Browse our inventory of prints by Sadao Watanabe here.

Showing October 2-31, 2009

First Thursday reception: October 1, 6-8pm

Karen Kunc Order

Wild Remnant, 2009. Woodcut. 18 x 18 inches.

Order presents new prints created in response to living in and conceptualizing on natural and human processes that affect environment, that contrast ways and means, and outcomes for life.  Karen Kunc (b. 1952) observes and responds to visual sensations of iconic sources – gridiron scaffolding, repetition of window frames, decaying fragments; she conceptualizes patterns - of channels and pathways as flowing movement or pulsing energy; sounds evoke concentric rings suggestive of rhythmic growth or expansion; aerial perspectives offer viewpoints of suburban sprawl and mining wastelands.  The artist considers the imbalances of architecture over nature, of human efforts related in scale to mountain ranges.  Kunc’s images are comparative metaphors, as she finds beauty and strangeness in equal measure, as poignantly meaningful concepts on dwelling, gathering, cultivation, networks, encroachments.  Her overarching question - on how things come about  - is envisioned here as the natural and unnatural order of things.

Within the last several years, Kunc has deliberately provoked her senses by living and working in New York, Vancouver, Italy, Egypt, all around the country, and in Nebraska, her home.  She has been evolving the ongoing “Urban/Rural Divide” series, and has moved beyond.  Her series leads her to understand that the “divide” is never so clear-cut, and the inevitable order of life is fluid, with shared concerns and sympathies.  Therefore, her visual metaphors continue to be related to life cycles, webs and linkages, even as “Darwinian” order prevails.

Karen Kunc is the Willa Cather Professor and Professor of Art at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  She has done many artist residencies around the world and has received numerous awards.  Kunc’s work can be found in many public collections including the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; Univeristy of Washington, Seattle Washington, and the Jyvaskyla Art Museum, Finland.

View previous work by the artist.

Please email or call 206 624-1324 for more information.

Zha Sai Rhythm of Shadows

Undulated Shadow, 2007. Reduction woodcut. 14 x 11 inches.

Rhythm of Shadows is an exhibition of ten reduction woodblock prints by Chinese artist Zha Sai (b. 1974.) These images seek to capture the artist’s impression of the natural environment of the her home in Wuhan, a large city situated on the banks of the Yangtze River in Hubei Province, an area known as the “Thousand Lakes Place.”  Zha Sai enjoys the meditative, repetitive quality of and concentration required in carving reduction woodcuts.

Zha Sai was born in Wuhan, studied at the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts and is currently a Professor of Printmaking at the Institute.  This is her first exhibition at Davidson Galleries.  Concurrent with this show the artist will have exhibitions at Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle; Pacific Northwest College of the arts, Portland OR; and Gonzaga University, Spokane WA.

Please email or call 206 624-1324 for more information.

Eugène Grasset Les Mois

Decembre, c. 1900. Color wood engraving. 8 x 6 inches.

Swiss-born graphic artist Eugène Samuel Grasset (1845-1917) was one of the leading figures in the Art Nouveau movement in Paris.  Best known for his iconic posters and his contributions to graphic design—an italic typeface he created in 1898 is still used by designers around the world—Grasset also designed furniture, ceramics, tapestries, and postage stamps.  In 1894, Grasset was commissioned by the French department store La Belle Jardinière to create twelve original artworks to be used as a calendar.

Grasset’s delectable wood engravings, depicting beautiful young women in seasonal costumes and gardens that change with the seasons, were issued as a fine art portfolio called Les Mois (The Months) by the Paris publisher G. de Malherbe.  Davidson Galleries will be presenting an exhibition of all twelve original plates from Les Mois during the month of October.

Please email or call 206 624-1324 for more information.

Contemporary printmaker Barbara Robertson is included in the panel for the upcoming TRUST YOUR EYE: How to Acquire Art in Seattle.

Barbara Robertson. Bang, 2008. Mixed media on paper on panel. 44 x 40 inches

Curious, new and practicing art collectors alike will be inspired and delighted as this lively panel explores diverse perspectives on looking at art, the joy of collecting, and developing a personal vision­—while regaling the audience with stories of Northwest art and artists.

September 24, 2009 :: 6-8:30pm
Foster/White Gallery, 220 Third Ave South, Seattle
Tickets: $50 (includes local gallery tour and refreshments)

All proceeds benefit Artist Trust’s grants and resources for Washington State artists of all disciplines.

Barbara Robertson is an artist, educator, conservator and curator. She is the founder of Seattle Print Arts, an association of artists, arts professionals and collectors who have an avid interest in the expanding field of print arts and an appreciation of the print media

For complete details, visit Artist Trust’s website.

We would like to invite you to support an exciting printmaking project artist Don Fels will be undertaking this fall in Spain. We are seeking subscribers to help fund a special opportunity for Don to work on monoprints inspired by the historic birthplace of the Kabbalah.  Each subscriber at $250 will receive one of the small edition of works associated with the monoprint/collage project. This contribution represents less than half the usual price for the artist’s work in this scale.

Don Fels. Trajectories (preliminary study), 2009. Mixed media. 9 x 32 inches.

Fels will be working for the month of October 2009 with Spanish master-printer Eusebi Subiros at the Lupusgrafic studio in Girona on the Costa Brava, in collaboration with Davidson Galleries in Seattle and Michael Dunev Art Projects in Torroella dei Montgri, Spain. It was in Girona that the Kabbalah was first published. With the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, the book made its way with them around the world.

Working with Sebi, Fels will create a series of monoprints to include chine colle and collage, found images, diagrams and drawing. The series will pursue the intersection of the Zohar (the most important work of the Kabbalah) and Linear Perspective- the external and internal. The Zohar grapples with the concept of infinity and looking deeply inwards. Linear Perspective and the concept of the Vanishing Point produced a system for projecting outwards into infinite space. Moving in opposite directions, the two bodies of knowledge developed simultaneously in Spain and Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries.

For some years in Italy and then in India, Fels has been researching the relationship between the art of perspective and the Voyages of Discovery, which the perspective system made possible.  The time spent in Girona offers the extraordinary chance to broaden his research to re-consider these developments in light of the life of the mind.

“Trajectories”, mixed media, 2009, 9×32” is a study for the print project. It reproduces a 1521 diagram by Cesare Cesarino, itself based on Leonardo da Vinci’s ground-breaking work on perspective from 1492. In the mid-15th century, the funnel, as pictured in the piece, brought the French word trajectory into the English language.

If you would like to participate in this important project, please email or call 206-624-7684 to subscribe.
We are hoping to complete the subscription by September 25. Thank you very much.