Betty Scheer - Lino, Room with birdcage - Framed - Sold

Linocut from 2005 on handmade paper. Title: Room with birdcage. Edition: 10/10 After her training at the Royal Academy of Visual Arts in The Hague (1959-1965), Betty Scheer (1941-2006) began making tapestries featuring mostly animal and plant depictions. For a period thereafter, she created pastels, mainly of landscapes and still lifes. From 1992 onwards, she founded her craft in making linocuts. Initially with a small number of print runs, but over time she developed this technique to such an extent that she also started working in halftones and transparencies, resulting in later work often consisting of 15 or more print runs. Because Scheer printed everything by hand, it was very labor-intensive; consequently, the edition was often no higher than five copies. She created cheerful and recognizable art. In her attic studio, surrounded by the eternal scent of linoleum and block print, she gave her own interpretation of everyday reality in deep, layered colors derived from printing techniques she had developed herself. Simple scenes and objects are rediscovered in Scheer's relief prints: fish on a newspaper, a table with playing cards, geraniums, a dried-out mouse from a chimney flue, the earthenware pipe bowls her son found in a waste container. From the carefully considered compositions, often in a compelling, square format, a sense of wonder for 'the little things' is evident. The use of color, the halftones and transparencies, reinforce that feeling of loving enchantment. With color, Scheer makes objects stand out more strongly and gives depth to the representation. Scheer himself on this: “For me, the representation is not the most important thing, but rather a way to indicate the essence of everything, to convey the essence. Not so much ‘this is what it is’. The relativity of reality is depicted by means of figurative language, in other words, figuration is not a subject but a central visual means to give meaning to reality.”