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Press Release
In the first solo exhibition of the new year, the Marsha Mateyka Gallery presents a selection of woodcuts
by nationally recognized printmaker, Aline Feldman. Her distinctive woodcuts are highly prized for
their complexity, color and vitality. Her images capture a very American sense of optimism and
individual expression. Her works are in many museum collections throughout the U.S. including
locally: the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the
Baltimore Museum of Art.
For decades, Aline Feldman has been fascinated by the patterns, contours and rhythms of the American
landscape. Her preference is for aerial, panoramic views with broad, sweeping expanses as seen
in this exhibition, in “Rivering Night”. In more recent years, she has expanded her interests
to include the density, energy and vitality of cities. Once again her preference is the bird’s
eye view as seen in “Midtown".
Her work begins with observations, drawings and photographs of specific places but her images are
often the result of improvising, inventing and combining several places or views. “In her more
recent series called the Paradoxes of Place, Feldman has brought together city and country in the same
image, exploring the intersection of these seemingly disparate subjects. These painterly prints
capture a place where the artist’s imagination and reality come together.”**
Four of these images are on view in this exhibition.
Aline Feldman's distinctive style is a blend of Western and Eastern traditions, influenced by studies
with internationally known masters. Max Beckman and Werner Drewes at Washington University,
St. Louis, introduced her to simplification of form, cubistic break up of space and artistic license
to transpose color. To this day, their influence is felt in her own reduction of complex
landscape or city views into expressionistic shapes and vibrant colors. Her compositions fill
the whole space with robust patterns and rhythms.
Later, in the 1960's, Aline Feldman studied with Unichi Hiratsuka, a revered woodcut master,
who was visiting Washington, DC. (He was later to be designated a "Living Treasure" in Japan.)
From Unichi Hiratsuka, Aline Feldman learned the traditional technique of carving the image into wood and
printing with watercolor brushed onto the block.
In her own work, Aline Feldman deviates from the traditional color woodcut technique. She eliminates
the often-tedious use of separate woodblocks for each color as in the classic technique. She instead
uses a single, large block of wood or the "white line” method. Carved lines separate the colors and
shapes, while multiple printings, a few painted areas at a time, transfer the image to the paper. The
printing is done with watercolor painted on the woodblock. This results in an image that is a unique
watercolor/monoprint rather than one from an edition of identically, colored woodblock prints.
Aline Feldman has received numerous awards and prizes over her 50 years of printmaking. The Marsha Mateyka
Gallery has represented this artist since 1988 with six solo exhibitions. For further information, please
contact the gallery.
**Ann Shafer, Assistant Curator, The Baltimore Museum of Art in “ALINE FELDMAN, The Dynamics of City and
Countryside: The Synthesis of Reality & Imagination” a brochure accompanying the exhibition at Howard Community College,
Columbia, MD, fall of 2011.
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