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Holly studied painting and printmaking at UC Santa Cruz and
printmaking at the Royal College of Art, London. She has had solo
shows in London, Manila, Edinburgh, Seattle, Santa Rosa, Santa
Jose and San Francisco, and participated in group exhibitions and
biennales around the world.
She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts,
the British Arts Council, the Greenshields Foundation of Canada,
and the Phelan Awards Foundation for Printmaking. An elected member
of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, U.K., her work is
in many public collections, including the Achenbach Foundation,
Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco; Stanford University,
California; Portland Museum, Oregon; Victoria and Albert Museum,
London; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK; British Arts Council; Scottish
National Gallery of Art; Hawaii State Art Museum, Hilo; Bibliotheque
Nationale Paris and Chi-ba Art Museum, Japan.
"My
interest in mezzotints began in the early 1970s when I was an
art student at UC Santa Cruz and tried to emulate the beautiful
Mezzotints of Avati and Hamaguchi that I saw reproduced in printmaking
books. However, there were no books, no teachers, and virtually
no U.S. practitioners. I was stymied, yet intrigued. Certainly
the sensuous velvety blacks captivated me, but also the elegant
simplicity and purity of the technique. The ability to be in
total control of tonal gradations, limited only by the pressure
of my hand, rather than the whim of the etching acid, was satisfying.
But above all, this medium had the capacity to imbue my simple
still life images with a reserved strength and beauty which I
could obtain in no other way.
"To achieve the subtle qualities of tone I spend many hours
"rocking" a copper plate with a mezzotint rocker until
the plate has thousands of tiny holes, each with a bit of raised
copper burr. These burrs hold a tremendous amount of ink, and a
fully rocked plate prints a rich velvety black unparalleled in
any other print medium. To obtain an image, I scrape the surface
of the plate, variously lowering the surface of the burrs so they
will hold less ink and thereby yield gradations of dark and light.
To print white, the plate must be scraped and burnished to an absolutely
smooth surface. To grasp this manner of working, think of covering
a sheet of drawing paper with charcoal and erasing out an image."
Read
Holly Downing's biography... |
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Paintings
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Pont Vieux, Albi, France
20" x 36"
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Spoletto Bridge, Italy
8" x 14"
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Apse of Chiesa , Monte Castello di Vibio, Italy
8" x 12"
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Porto di Maggiore, Montecastello di Vibo, Italy
36" x 24"
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Lucca Bridge
11th C. Bridge nr. Lucca, Italy
24" x 48"
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Petaluma Bridge
24" x 48"
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