Cleo Wilkinson - Artist
One of the a few artists working today in the mezzotint printmaking technique Cleo Wilkinson graduated with an honours degree from Elam Art School (Auckland University) New Zealand.
She has taken this complex delicate and most physically demanding of all art forms to great heights and diversity. Each image shows a great range of tones and depth of color which is only obtained through painstaking burnishing of the plate and many trial printings. She has designed a unique handcrafted roulette to grind the plate which creates a rare stippled texture to the images.
Cleo Wilkinson has had recent Solo exhibitions in Venice (Italy),Vancouver (Canada) and has exhibited and worked widely throughout Europe, Australasia, Asia, Canada and USA.
She has been an invited Artist in Residence and worked in Art Studios in Florence, Venice, Perugia (Italy),The Netherlands, Japan, Luxembourg, Greece, Sweden,Finland, New Zealand, Vancouver, Calgary (Banff), Quebec (Canada), New York, Berkeley (USA), Buenos Aires (Argentina),Reykjavik (Iceland) and Australia.
A recipient of international awards her work is included in many prestigious public, private and corporate collections.Her art is regularly selected for International Print Biennials and Annuals in Europe : Italy, Bulgaria,Korea,Poland, Spain, Japan, Egypt, Lithuania, Germany, Vienna, Canada, USA, Russia, Istanbul (Turkey), China , Finland and Australia.
Cleo Wilkinson is represented by The Old Print Shop Gallery Manhattan (New York), Davidson Galleries (Washington DC), Stone and Press Gallery (New Orleans) USA, Malaspina Galleries (Vancouver: Canada), Expansionist & ABC Galleries (Amsterdam).
MEZZOTINT
The mezzotint process was invented by Ludwig Von Seigen in
Amsterdam in 1642. It is a laborious and time consuming
technique for creating a print and primarily for this reason
it is not widely used today.
The mezzotint has rightly been described the most complex
of all art forms. Mezzotint is among the most physically
demanding mediums in art, once tried and quickly abandoned
as “too difficult” for example by the great printmaker MC Escher.
A copper or zinc plate is “rocked” with a curved, notched blade
until the surface is entirely pitted. At this stage an inked plate
would print a rich uniform black. The artist then uses a scraper
or burnisher to flatten the raised parts, a little for dark greys,
a lot for light greys, completely for white (after inking and wiping,
the plate holds no ink where it is smooth).
The result of this process is an image emerging from pitch black
“nothingness” a true analogue to creation. Outlines are simplified
by absence of line, while substance is rendered with a virtually
infinite range of tonal subtlety.
No other art can give birth to such magnificent areas of light and
shade as this purely tonal medium. Imagery is permeated by mystical
elements derived from the unique spatial relationships of the
mezzotint medium. This technique demands a long involved process
the artist can be very closely working on a plate for at least 100
hours before even starting to print the image.
