Margie Sheppard - South Australian Printmaker and Painter
About the Artist
Margie Sheppard lives at Kangarilla, in the Adelaide Hills in South Australia, where she works in her studio as a printmaker and painter. Her practice now spans 30 years. In that time she has spent a long period working exclusively as a printmaker, making large densely coloured etchings for which she has become well known. In recent years she has returned to oil painting and she is currently dividing her time between painting and printmaking. Both these practices hold different but equally strong attractions for her.
Margie Sheppard’s new paintings and etchings show a transition to the most simple forms, leaving behind the figuration of her previous work. Simplicity and strength dominate.
Some of Margie’s paintings are simply suspended rectangles of colour. They are spacious and transcend the everyday. The colours are luminous and become the subject of the paintings.
Her layered abstractions reveal surfaces hovering over more surfaces, densely coloured yet pulsing radiantly. It is a world into which the viewer can fall, absorbed by its depths. Her many years as a printmaker informs her decisions and powerful sense of colour structure.
The etchings are purely abstract but have more visual elements for the viewer to read. Shape, texture and colour all play their part to give visual meaning.
Margie’s new work has the same sensibility as her previous figurative images. The stillness and dream-like quality remain.
