Thanks to Juergen...

Okay everyone, the blog is back up and hopefully running.  Take images and info, and use it.  I will check in spasmodically to help and offer suggestions, but basically it returns as a resource.  Thank you to all for the kind words, but really it's a time matter.
Anyway....have at it.

Well everyone, I want to say thank you for the support; kind words and the encouragement.  I have enjoyed the process and working on the blog, but now...I think I have to say goodbye.  I will leave all the postings up here because I still think that there is the potential for the material to be useful in the future. 
I don't have the time to dedicate to the blog anymore but I have had a wonderful time and the process has been amazing.

Gary Ratushniak (Canada 1957 - )

Through this blog I have "met" a number of remarkable people and family members and friends of artists I have featured on this blog, from Tokyo to Vienna to Los Angeles to Sydney.  I am often astonished at the generosity of people who write to me, and it is clear through the blog what exactly my aesthetic is.  I recently received an email from Gary Ratushniak, who studied with Sybil Andrews for over a decade in Canada in her later years and even had the good fortune of exhibiting with her both during her lifetime and after she died. She became both a mentor and a very close friend to him but more than that he also met Bernard Rice in the mid-80s after he went to London. Rice taught him some woodblock techniques which he still uses. Over the years they both became good friends.

Gary grew up in British Columbia which is where Sybil Andrews moved after she left England. 

Over a ten-year period Ratushniak studied drawing, painting and printmaking under Andrews, with an emphasis on the techniques of printmaking, and especially the art of the linocut. In the course of this decade a deep friendship grew between the two, and Andrews gave voice to this dedicating her book The Artist's Kitchen with the words "For Gary Ratushniak, who shared our great discussions".

I think these works show mastery not just of colour and application, but also of line and movement.  If the goal was to imbue his work with painterly qualities, he did it.  There is a kind of depth that is in these works whereas in many of the Grosvenor School works there is a sweep and swoop of line and colour, but depth was not a main concern.  I like both, because both speak of the same process but a different execution.  His works are outstanding and visually exciting.  Enjoy.

Jan Portenaar (Netherlands 1886 - 1958)

Portenaar was an important Dutch printmaker and graphic artist.  He is largely unknown outside of Holland,  but more's the pity.  He worked extensively in graphic arts, and was famous in Holland for his etchings and lithographs but he also worked as a woodcut artist and worked extensively as a book illustrator. 

It is suggested that Portenaar was largely self educated and, this is another reason why his works are outstanding.  He did study however under Piet van Wijngaerdt and Willem Witsen.  Portenaar was the consumate traveller and lived in London, where he created a piece largely considered one of his masterpieces, "Waterloo Bridge".  In 1915 he won the silver medal at the San Francisco International Exhibition that created many stars of the print.  He also visited India and lived in the 20's for a time in the Dutch East Indies.

There is a diversity of style to be studied in the works of Portenaar, who often suggestively indicated water in its various aspects by a few judiciously chosen lines.  Portenaar cannot be mentioned without any comparison to his mentor, Willem Witsen.  Witsen's technical ingenuity produced odd and telling effects by the use of an aquatint. sulphurtint and other processes or manipulations, and the results of his works are outstanding.  The works of Portenaar seemed to strive in the Orient.  There are distinct notes in his works, and his love of water is clear.  His works, although not always stunning, are noteworthy and the artistic merit of his works go without staying. 

Lily Blatherwick (Britain 1859 -1934)

Lily Blatherwick was a British printmaker and the wife of the famed lithographer Archibald Standish Hartick.  Although there is nothing astonishing in her designs or execution there is something of interest.  In many ways Blatherwick's works were overshadowed by the works of her husband, but her own works are an expression of appreciation for the romantic beauty of the natural world.  Her realism was not wasted just on a lovely scene however.  Despite the monochromatic aspects of these lithographs, the works themelseves have a richness all their own. 

A wise artist turns away from hackneyed subjects, not from a desire to appear original but from a feeling that he or she can better test their powers on subjects that are not wrapped in memories.  It is clear that Blatherwick was not oblivious of the work done by her husband, her works are works of her own desire and are competent and clearly trained images of nature.  Yes, there is something Edwardian about them, but at a time when many Edwardians were doing works of Venetian bridges or Gothic protals, here was a woman doing something that inspired her. 

When an artist struck off across the open country and looked at unfamiliar things they often did so within the parameters of their own training and their cultural understanding of things.  Here was an artist who, more than likely did works that were inspired by her own garden.  They are delicate works and her sensitive suggestions of form show a woman who had the freedom to pursue and enjoy the things she wanted to.  Other artists, might have done this as well, and captured the same kinds of images with just as much skill, but these plates are beautiful and show us an artist capable of putting nature to the lithographic stone.

Blatherwick exhibited at the Royal Academy and her name is generally centered on watercolour studies of flowers, but I would suggest she was more of a naturalist.  Her works are held in all of the major British museums including the V&A and the British.