Getting to know our members: Denise Scholz-Wulfing

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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.

Burnie Print Prize: Laura Stark

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Laura Stark, Pathways VI 6th State, collagraph, blind embossing, collage.

 

Pathways VI 6th State is the last image of this series of prints originally inspired by the markings left by larvae on scribbly gums. It refers to the ancient pathways or dreamtime tracks of the  aborigines across the continent, the breadth of our landscape as seen from the air, and also the internal and external pathways or meanderings which we follow in the path of life.

In this series my procedure was to change, manipulate or reduce the plate from which they were printed in a number of different ways. This last version, a collage of print remnants,  encompasses the original theme but the pathways have become more tenuous, even fractured, perhaps an indication of uncertain times.

Burnie Print Prize: Neilton Clarke

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Here’s the next Sydney Printmaker who is a finalist in the Burnie Print Prize.

Ring Reader: Hossawa to the Sea

(Unique-state woodblock & copperplate relief print, collage & embossing, 2020).

Hossawa is a Hinohara-area waterfall on the mountainous Tokyo-Yamanashi border, its waters feeding Akigawa River, in turn Tama River, Tokyo Bay, and finally the sea. The experience of the locale feeds into and informs my studio activity, having spent two-plus decades living there.
Countless hours spent exploring its cedar & pine-clad inclines on scooter and on foot make for indelible impressions, its maple, camelia, azalea & hydrangea groves amplifying the marked seasonal changes with bursts of colour.
The work’s bell-like ovoid forms have been hand-printed directly from prepared cedar log-end offcuts sourced from mountainside outposts. Their pronounced granular striations, carrying a record of the summer-winter growth alternations over many years, make for a kind of logbook in more senses than one.
Seismic-prone, being awoken by tremors & shakes in the early hours is part of the fabric of the everyday there. The collage-aesthetic employed here, with its capacity for fissure, juxtaposition, and also containment, lends itself well to addressing such kinds of dislocation.

Burnie Print Prize: Anna Russell

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Most of us can’t get down to Burnie to see the works in the Print Prize this time. I will be publishing  as many of the successful Sydney Printmakers works as I can here, together with the artists statements where available.

                                                                                                                                                                                    Anna Russell, Voyagers, woodblock, stencil, collage, 55×58 USP 2019

Voyagers

This is a whale’s eye view of voyaging from the harshness of the Antarctic to the warmth of calm subtropical waters, the land appearing from time to time on the horizon.  The voyage depends on successful avoidance of the land in an ocean of distracting sounds.

Tensions in this work suggest navigation into the unknown, facing risk, bracing for the unexpected. Safe harbours are hard to find. We’ve made progress internationally in saving whales from slaughter but they still live with hazards we have created.

Meanwhile we have our own voyage into the unknown as the climate changes. Can our work with the whales show us how to act collectively, to make order and balance out of the chaos of our current consuming?