Capturing the primal in the familiar

Dintiman’s photogravures on view at Alliance Gallery

NARROWSBURG, NY — “Familiar Places,” an exhibition of photogravures by Robin Dintiman, will open at the Alliance Gallery on Friday, March 20, with an artist’s reception from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. The exhibit will be on view through April 11.

“For as long as I can remember, 35 years or so, I’ve found reverie through certain aspects of the natural environment. When an object, a tree for example, clings to life on a steep cliff, my emotional reaction is strong and specific,” said Dintiman, whose print-making work—including photogravures and monoprints—is characterized by a deep connection to nature.

Photogravure is a venerable and unpredictable intaglio process in which continuous plate tone is created from a photograph. Where photography yields isolated, frozen moments, photogravures transcend the static image, appearing to capture the passage of time. Dintiman’s landscape photogravures seem less to be representations of a place than of the memory of that place.

“Most recently, I have photographed parts of the landscape that are intimately familiar, places I have walked many times. The photogravure process helps accentuate the numinous quality of a landscape. This releases it from real life to become something more boundless, a personal artifice,” she said.

Dintiman grew up in the Hudson River Valley, to which she returned in 2004 after 25 years in Northern California. Returning to the east coast—and its dense, intricate woodlands—inspired Dintiman to try to capture the emotional experience of revisiting familiar natural settings after the passing of years.

“Familiar Places” represents the duality of the two coasts that Dintiman has called home. Her photogravures and monoprints, the product of years of photographing both regions, evoke both the grandeur of the American West and “the intimacy and complexity of the woods of the east,” she said. “In several media, I work to capture the emotional correlation, the resonance of primal forces in nature, in a personal form.”

As an undergraduate at Moore College of Art, Dintiman received a fellowship to apprentice in Kyoto, Japan, where she was trained in ancient Japanese techniques including hand blockprinting and stenciling. Her work—including sculptures, prints, drawings, and collages—has been exhibited in museums throughout the country, including the Philadelphia Art Museum, the National Museum for Women in the Arts and the Chrysler Museum.

This exhibit is sponsored by the Delaware Valley Arts Alliance, the Arts Council for Sullivan County, NY, and is made possible in part with funding from the Visual Arts Program of the New York State Council on the Arts. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

For more information visit ArtsAllianceSite.org or call 845-252-7576.