Alice Springs artists learn lessons in lithography 

 
 
Alice Springs painters Wayne Eager and Marina Strocchi are the latest to learn the secrets of print-making at CDU's Northern Editions

Alice Springs painters Marina Strocchi and Wayne Eager are the latest to learn the secrets of printmaking at Northern Editions on the Casuarina campus at Charles Darwin University.

The pair are spending two weeks transferring their skills as painters to the crafts of lithography and etching.

Northern Editions printmakers will later produce their works as a limited edition for an exhibition on campus in May next year.

Strocchi and Eager are experienced artists trained in Melbourne who have spent the past 14 years in the Central Desert and Alice Springs region.

Marina Strocchi first came to the Central Desert in 1992 to set up and run the art centre at Haasts Bluff, assisted by her partner and fellow artist Wayne Eager.

The pair stayed at Haasts Bluff for five and half years, with Eager also working in other remote communities (Kintore and Kiwirrkurra) for Papunya Tula Artists.

For the past six years they have worked from Alice Springs, where they both have studios in their suburban home.

Their two-week stay at Northern Editions print workshops was made possible by the Australian Government's Regional Arts Fund grant through ArtsNT.

It is the first time both artists have been able to spend an intensive period working with lithography and etching plates.

‘We’ve been to Northern Editions to learn printmaking twice briefly, but it’s the first time we’ve been able to develop new work and do lithography,’ says Strocchi.

‘And it’s been a real treat to be here with expert technicians helping us.

‘We’re both painters, but it is good to step away for a time and do something complementary to our painting. It also means we come back to painting refreshed, and with new perspectives.’

Strocchi and Eager are both landscape painters, although Eager’s works are more abstract in nature than Marina’s.

Their works have been shown in solo shows through major galleries in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, and at the Raft Artspace in Darwin.

Eager was a founding member of Melbourne’s Roar Studios, which emerged in the early 1980s with its raw, energised abstract style of painting both the landscape and the human figure.

The Australian Government’s regional arts program, the Regional Arts Fund, gives artists and communities throughout regional, rural and remote Australia better access to opportunities to practise and experience the arts.