HERLINDE SPAHR
AFTER THE STORMS
Work from 2013 to 2023
With Excerpts from the Artist's Notebooks Lithium Press 2023
The book was featured in the Spring Newsletter of the Achenbach Graphic Arts Council, the Legion of Honor, San Francisco.
The book documents the complete series of AFTER THE STORMS, representing all 48 panels, preserving the full arc from the poison hemlock suite to the triumphant closing series of the lotus flower. The book marks Spahr’s transition from stone lithography to a new and untested medium for artwork, panels of Formica, with a grain and hardness mimicking the litho stone. The surface allows for more monumental work, a fusion of printmaking techniques and painting. Exquisite drawings combine with rubbed, scarred and incised surfaces in oils, ink and graphite. The long cycle of AFTER THE STORMS is celebratory, work completed after the artist’s experiences with mania finally went into remission. Following the same formula of her other three books, the artwork is followed by a generous selection of artist’s notes that chronicle the excitement (and frustration) of working in a new and uncommon medium. They also highlight the climate of mind that gave rise to the images. Spahr has taken part in more than one hundred exhibitions, here and abroad. Her work is widely represented in public collections. She is featured in The Best of Printmaking. An International Collection, and in 2021 the Monterey Museum of Art featured cycles of work in this book in a solo exhibition, entitled The Precipice Within. David Acton in his book 60 Years of American Printmaking, has summarized Spahr’s work as follows: "Technical finesse, an open attitude to the creative process, and deeply personal subject matter are typical of the works of Herlinde Spahr.”
Published by Lithium Press, 2023
