Lynn Peterfreund
For many years I’ve worked in both printmaking and painting, and in both representational and abstract languages. The vocabulary of forms, marks and compositions in my abstract prints comes from decades of working directly from observation of the natural world, from all that I see, and from particular printmaking processes. I work mostly in techniques that encourage immediacy and an honest recording of marks. The transparency of ink or paint layers allow me to express how I think, feel and see with directness and a visible hand. I am striving for complexity in color, depth and mystery, openness, animation, play and a multiplicity of allusions in the work I’m doing. A lot of the work is about thinking, both analytically and intuitively.
The forms in the work evoke natural and urban landscapes, micro worlds, architectural space, and music.
The prints I am making are mostly monotypes or monoprints, although I am doing some editions of prints that involve both monotype and etching techniques.
Monotype, one of a kind prints, are made by applying ink to a plexiglass plate, manipulating and offsetting that ink onto paper, in my case, with the use of a press. Additional layers are added to a print by repeating this method. Almost all of the ink is offset to the paper making each print unique. Monoprints are a combination of the above method with some variety of permanent plate such as drypoint, etching, photopolymer, relief as one of the layers. I also draw, paint, and collage onto some of the prints. Together, quiet control and spontaneity are important to me in both the making of the prints and the experience a viewer has of them. I hope for a kind of engagement with the work in which the viewers’ stories meet mine, their ways of thinking and feeling are revealed as I am moved by my thoughts and feelings to interpret what I see.
I grew up in New Jersey, was educated at the University of Michigan (BA in Psychology/Art,) the Ontario College of Art, and Pratt Institute, where I received an MFA in 1980. After working and teaching in the New York City area, I moved to western Massachusetts where I continue to teach and make prints, paintings, and murals. My work has been shown nationally and internationally and is included in hundreds of private collections and a growing number of corporate and public collections.
I live in Leverett with my husband, Nicholas Xenos, and have two sons, Ezra and Sam, both living in Brooklyn.
