Print Making as tribute

Went to the opening of Rosalind Atkin's show at Australian Galleries Works on Paper (the Oxford St end of Glenmore Rd, Opp Barry Stern galleries). Ros and I met at Bundanon,  Arthur Boyd's property on the Shoalhaven River where we both had been awarded a residency, staying in the Glenn Mercutt specifically designed Units, with private facilities linked by kitchen and dining areas, and access to huge studios. We got along like a house on fire - two "can do" women who loved to walk the National Park trails (Fast!) and worked into the night in our adjoining studios. We both had kids around the same age, lived in the inner suburbs of our respective cities (Me Syd and her Melb) and were experienced in the wife/mother/artist/"plus earning money" merry go round balancing trick. And we were lucky enough to be taking time out for our art.

Anyway, this exhibition is a lovely lyrical tribute to her mother who died of cancer in 2007 after hiding her illness for some time. The exhibition represents an amazing amount of work and eye strain - her already small woodcuts (?) of trees with the most minute of painstaking detail were apparently executed with No 1 Chemist glasses by a woman who still doesn't need them in every day life (How is that possible?). I realised we had even more in common - my up coming show at Danks St in November is a tribute to my dad who died in late 2006, and is called Trees for my Father -so we are both obsessed with trees and we both needed to work through our "Silent Grief" (as three of the pieces are called) by making art! Anyway, as well as the trees there are blue birds, which  are new to her work and are layered over sheets of music and other personal symbols relating to her mother. Best not to go on a rainy, windy night, as I did, because the work fluttered in the breeze - but perhaps that is the point, the moving wind of the spirit of her mother, let free. On for the next three weeks.

What do you think of the show? What do you think about artists working a tribute to loved ones? Post your comments here.