Artist Portfolio

**Denise Scholz-Wulfing** in her home studio.

Denise has lived and worked in Europe and has travelled extensively throughout Asia, but she has always returned to her home in Sydney. After completing a B.A. in Visual Art from COFA in 1983, she continued her art practice, moving from painting and drawing to printmaking, (specifically etching) over the last 15 years.

Her work is figurative and narrative in style and draws inspiration from her travels and the art that she had seen during those travels. She has taken particular delight in, and has been inspired by, the work of artists such as Pieter Bruegel and William Hogarth. She finds further inspiration in the world around her and uses various narratives to explore ideas, feelings and emotions.

Her most recent etchings are strongly influenced by the purchase of land in the country and, while still populated by people, the images explore the bush, its landscape, iconography and symbolism.

Please visit the Artist’s page to see the range of her work: https://sydneyprintmakers.com.au/portfolio/denise-scholz-wulfing/

Denise Scholz-Wulfing - Paddocks with Gum Trees. Taylors Flat — **Denise Scholz-Wulfing**, *Paddocks with Gum Trees, Taylors Flat*, 2017 etching, 29x42cm

Denise describes her Practice:

My printmaking practice has developed over the years as I have refined my etching technique. My approach to etching is traditional, working with copper and zinc plates, and acid or ferric chloride. After applying a hard ground to the plate I then scratch the image onto the plate, I do this many times to develop the line work and in doing so the tonal contrast of my images. I then refine the image by adding aquatint to increase the tonal value. Generally, I work in black and white or sepia on a cream paper for the drama, contrast and clarity that this brings to my prints.

For me etching is the ideal tool to develop my drawn ideas. I have long admired the work of figurative artists who are moral or social and commentators. These artist/printmakers such a Pieter Bruegel, William Hogarth, William Blake and Francisco Goya, use drawing as a central part of their practice creating ‘stages’ on which their characters play. Often inspired directly by these artists I reference Biblical or mythological stories and combine them with personal imagery to give my etched images an extra dimension.

Over the past few years I have increasingly used the landscape and natural environment as a metaphor for issues which are foremost in society, such as climate change and environmental degradation.

I continue the search for the ideal combination of subject and form, experimenting lately with collaging and reworking old prints into mixed media constructions.

**Denise Scholz-Wulfing**, *Bird &*, mixed media, etching, collage, wood, 20 x 40cm.

**Sharon Zwi** at her photography exhibition, *Time Exposures: 60 Life Portraits*, 2013.

Sharon was born in Apartheid South Africa, studied at Reading University and The Slade, University of London, and immigrated to Australia in 1982.

She is primarily a Printmaker, although she also paints and does black and white photography. Her work is representational and it is about issues, some private and some public. She tries to depict universal issues by showing them from her personal viewpoint. Her prints are influenced by her black and white photography and by old photographs. Her photographs are influenced by printmaking and painting concerns.

She has been a member of the Sydney Printmakers since 1994, exhibiting with them at least annually. She has had a few one person photography exhibitions, the last being Time Exposures: 60 Life Portraits in 2013.

You can see Sharon’s work on the Artists page at https://sydneyprintmakers.com.au/portfolio/sharon-zwi/

Here, Sharon talks about her practice :

I work in both photography and printmaking and the two feed on, and influence, each other. In more recent times I have been using a tablet and drawing onto a screen with a stylus. I have the images printed by a master printer with whom I discuss the best way to print my work, and which archival paper to use. Sometimes I work in purely in printmaking; other times purely with photography; and sometimes I combine both streams of my work.

Mostly, my work is about people, but visiting Oratunga Station, in the Flinders Ranges, in 2019 when I participated in the JMCCCP (JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice Winter School), gave me an opportunity to work on landscape images. The landscape of the Flinders Ranges was very different from the coastal and city landscapes I’m more familiar with, and this inspired me to try a very different kind of work, which I am still experimenting with.

Sharon Zwi - Oratunga Station Flinders Ranges — *Oratunga Station Flinders Ranges*, 2019, archival ink print, 65 x 46cm.

Photoshop allows me to work in a very similar way to that of screen printing, especially when I use layers. I can get a huge range of effects, textures, and colours with Photoshop, and use a range of drawing or painting ‘tools’ which give a vast range of mark making effects. It is not a mechanistic way of working, and I do not use the ‘special effects’, which can give a uniform feel. It is no more mechanistic or ‘tricksy’ than any other method of printmaking, despite some peoples’ argument that it is. It is a modern printmaking method that I employ and experiment with, and I find it suits the work I am trying to make.

Getting to know our members: Denise Scholz-Wulfing

Getting to know our Members: Sharon Zwi