The Maleny Printmakers are back in the Mary Cairncross Scenic Reserve gallery with their exhibition Reptiles and Amphibians. Both numbers of artists and works were less than usual due to the uncertainties of Covid-19 from the point of view of ‘will the exhibition be cancelled due to lockdown’ and vagaries of health and sometime lack of artists supplies. Still, small it may be (for a big room) but we did it and it will be up on the wall until Sunday 3rd October.

There were seven printmakers in the exhibition:

JILLIAN BERGMAN, JENNIFER EURELL, NEVILLE FIELD, JULIE HANHARAN, CHOLENA DREW HUGHES, KAREN SHAW AND JENNI MATTHEWS

I had two days on duty – always a pleasure in this venue. I shared one day with printmaker Jillian Bergman, and another with a Mary Cairncross volunteer Cheryl Drew. We did a lot of talking between ourselves, and of course, to the steady dribble of visitors that on both days braved some uncertain weather. The wet weather not only lessens visitor numbers at the reserve but plays havoc with the paper the prints are on. People were interested in how the prints were made, so we had some plates on display to explain the process.

As usual there were lots of different techniques on display. Cholena, Neville and myself had all used cyanotype. I’m not fussed on unframed exhibitions, but there is a silver lining – I took the opportunity to do a couple of works that were larger than what I would have done if I’d had to frame them. Jenni Matthews works with polyester plate lithography (I still need to look into that one) and Karen Shaw has been using dry point etching, and tetrapack etching. Neville, Julie and myself had also made linocuts and Jillian kept to etching.