Lone Tratt: 50 Years of Printmaking

DUNDARAVE PRINT WORKSHOP + GALLERY, Vancouver BC - April 1 - 26
by Michael Turner
Originally from Denmark, Lone Tratt attained a bachelor’s degree from the School of Interior Design in Copenhagen before moving to Montreal two years later, at the age of 23. She continued her studies at the Saidye Bronfman Centre and, over the next 40 years, taught drawing, painting and printmaking while pursuing a busy studio practice. Her paintings and prints have shown in Montreal, New York, Winnipeg and Vancouver, and they are held in collections as far afield as Saudi Arabia.
In 1991, Tratt moved to Vancouver, where she joined the Dundarave Print Workshop + Gallery and developed within its workshop a printmaking school, which she ran for 13 years. In addition to conveying the finer points of etching, drypoint and intaglio, Tratt’s lessons emphasized the more intangible aspects of artmaking: that no matter how technically proficient we become, we are no match for the unlimited potential of the imagination. For Tratt, this unlimitedness is held in the “multiple dimensions of Nature,” whose dramatis personae includes rock, water, trees and earth.
Resonant works in this salon-style exhibition range from the trippy Look at the World – Look (1973), where a bearded gnome appears to inhale the natural world (in an effort to breathe new life into it?), and The Rock that Binds Me (2011), in which a webbed sandstone bank appears to carry within its form the skull of the mind that imagined it. For those curious to see Tratt combine all four of her beloved subjects into a single work, look no further than Twilight (2014).
Opening reception April 4, 4-8pm (check website for updates)
dundaraveprintworkshop.com