Angharad Dean

Artist's Statement

With a background in environmental design and natural history, my perspective is very much about how time, weather and man all influence our landscape. It’s a personal narrative: the relationship between me and the things of beauty that surround me. They speak to me and I listen and translate what I hear through my eyes into paint on a canvas or other media on paper. Print making is my most recent passion - I love the physical act of moving the ink on the plate and the ability to change each print to have its own special character. The recent summer of drought, dust storms and fire in the Canberra region had an enormous influence on my work. Working at Lanyon in the heat and dust and with the threat of approaching fires, opened my eyes to the isolation of living at a homestead such as Lanyon. It also allowed me to explore the natural history of the place, seeing dead trees lost to previous droughts as well as living trees still standing strong, and new growth amidst the dry landscape.

 

Biography

I left an award winning career as a town planner to take up the apparently inevitable call of my genes in mid 2005. I turned from working with people and landscape (taking a 4 dimensional view of the world) to capturing the immediacy of light, colour and movement in 2 dimensions: now I attempts to capture the 4th dimension – time - in the medium of the 2nd. My initial training as a designer has enabled me to see the world through a painter’s eyes and apply the techniques of colour and form to my chosen media of paints, inks and printmaking. I have recently been the recipient of several awards including the 2018 ASOC Sprint Show Second Prize in Printmaking ; 2019 Molonglo Catchment Group Prize;  2019 M16 Drawing Prize - shortlisted; 2015 ACT and Region Catchment Groups Art Prize Best in Show; ACTEW Water Prize; and the 2017 ASOC Spring Show First Prize in Printmaking.

Artworks by Angharad Dean

Photographed by Andrew Sikorski, Art Atelier Photography