I have shown my work in many exhibitions in New York, nationally and internationally including, The National Academy of Design; The Hollar Society, Prague; The International Print Center New York; The Susan Teller Gallery, New York; Iowa State University; The Lancaster Museum, Lancaster, PA; The City University of New York; The Trenton City Museum; The Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; The Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ; and Smith College.  I am a former president of the Society of American Graphic Artists.  I live and work in New York City

My prints are nature based, often begun on site and then worked up in the studio. I try to combine the spontaneity of a quick drawing with the strength of a carefully conceived composition to create images rich in tone and texture.

Gerald Marcus

gerald.r.marcus@gmail.com

I am a relief printmaker and book artist.  I like the simplicity of the materials I use —- carving tools, rollers, oil-based ink, and the back of a rubbing spoon.  Place a fine piece of rice paper on top of the inked carved surface of linoleum or wood, rub it with the back of a rubbing spoon and come up with a fully realized dramatic image.  This is a hand-pulled relief print.  Its power is enhanced by the use of black ink alone on white paper.  Many of my prints are narrative and character driven.  Black ink, white paper, and pared down linoleum or wood must carry the burden of proof.

“Black and white derives its source from the deepest recesses of our very being.”  So said Odilon Redon.

Max Klinger has said that “ the graphic mediums in black and white offer the

best way to communicate a fantasy vision of another world, or a deeply subjective and critical view of our own.”

These words carry strong resonance for me.

My prints can be found in the collections of the Corcoran Gallery, the Print Club of Albany, the Museum of the City of New York, and the Billie Rose Theater Collection at the New York Public Library.  Artist’s books are in the Special Collections Libraries of the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Library, Victoria & Albert Museum, Yale and Harvard.

"In the lithographic work such as Disputation, 1971, the spontaneity of drawing on the stone is reinforced by the image itself.  The space is important though the low horizon line gives a simple content and we can tell by this dance the facial expressions and open-hearted appeal that is a figure in the act of discussing." -- from his book, Harvey Breverman, Humanist Impulses.  He is the SUNY Distinguished Professor of Art at the university in Buffalo, NY.

Carol Wax originally trained to be a classical musician at the Manhattan School of Music but abandoned her music career when she fell in love with printmaking. Soon after she began engraving mezzotints, renowned print dealer Sylvan Cole invited her to exhibit at Associated American Artists Gallery, launching her career as a professional artist/printmaker. With the publication of her book, The Mezzotint: History and Technique, published by Abrams, 1990 and 1996, Carol added author and teacher to her credits. In the ensuing years she has expanded her repertoire of mediums beyond printmaking into other works on paper and painting.

Recognition of Carol's art includes an Individual Support Grant from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, Inc., two Artist Fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Concordia Career Advancement Award from NYFA, The Louise Nevelson Award for Excellence in Printmaking from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and residences at The MacDowell Colony and Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation's Space Program.  A selection of the many collections that own her prints are The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The New York and Boston Public Libraries, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Library of Congress, and The National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Drawing is the medium in which my image making begins and through which it evolves. Whether the source of the work is from direct observation, a photo I have taken or from my imagination, it is always initially expressed as a drawing. Ultimately, the work may become an etching or a painting, but at its core is always drawing. Drawing has a tactile directness that connects the mind and the hand. It is a two-way connection where the drawing evokes thought and thought evokes drawing. An unintentional gesture of the hand can change the concept in a direction that the mind alone would not have traveled.

Etching on a copper plate is, by its very nature, a process with many steps from its beginning through its completion. It is a process that is well suited to my way of working. I am able to develop a drawing that evolves as it develops.  Values and forms, must be decided, resolved and executed during the drawing. Patterns, made from lines, cross lines and stipples become spontaneously obvious to me while I work. Patterns and values can be built and enhanced by the layering of successive etches. When the plate is inked and printed, the inverted image becomes an entity onto itself; the whole greater than the sum of its parts.