Artist's Biography

Nancy Stein was born in Portland Oregon and studied at the University of Maryland, L'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Strasbourg, France, and CCAC in Oakland, where she received a BFA in Printmaking. Later, she gained an MFA as well San Francisco State. In 1975 Nancy moved to the Point Reyes area, where she raised her daughter. She has worked for many years as a garden designer in the area, as well as maintaining an active art career and building her own home on forested Inverness Ridge.

For the past five years Nancy has explored the subject of ocean waves in both pastels and in etchings. Pastel is a rich, soft medium, very immediate and colorful, but one of a kind. These works are usually large and dramatic. Etchings are laborious to make, taking much time to etch grooves into a copper plate. When the plate is finished, Nancy prints it by hand on a small etching press in her studio. Editions of 60 prints can be made, which makes the artwork much less costly, and therefore, available to more people. "There really is no black quite like the black produced in etching - it's luminous!" marvels Stein.

Nancy says that living in Point Reyes provides constant inspiration for her work, "Every single day is a surprise - the weather and the unpredictable patterns of light and fog are wonderfully elusive. The mercurial attitude of the weather is a backdrop to a community rich in wildlife, ocean and bay, forests, as well as ranches livestock, vineyards, and a history of immigrants and Miwok Indians. My images intend to evoke a sense of time and transformation as viewed through the human lens of a brief life. Each wave is as individual as we are -- they draw us completely into their expression. Since the camera lens fails to capture the depth of this experience, I explore what is missing -- the movement, the effect of wind and temperature, the transparency .....all of these elements are what makes the landscape something more than what we see."

Nancy Stein

Education: BFA California College of The Arts , Oakland, Ca. 1975
MFA San Francisco State Univ. San Francisco 1985
attended l’universite a Strasbourg, France 1970
Member of California Society of Printmakers
Guest Artist, Talking Press Studio, Inverness, California, 2001-2005
Awards: Sanchez Art Center, Best of Printmakers Show, 2004
Springfield Art Museum2004, $250 prize Printmaking Invitational
Curator: Bolinas Museum Group Show, February 2-26 2006 “Printmakers, Ink”

Artist's Statement

PASTEL

California is graced with an ocean scape unlike any other - the grey of the northern sea and its dark summer weather contrasts starkly with the southern California seascape that beams from travel brochures. Living in Point Reyes affords me the opportunity to attempt to capture this elusive subject. In the 30 years I’ve lived here, I’ve rarely seen the same color, the same sea again. In between wild night storms the sea can be a quiet surface that reflects the moon through clouds. Fog on a hot summer day can quickly transform the scene to a blurred impressionist painting. Crashing high tides whipped by the upwelling spring winds make spring and summer cold and ferocious.

I am not attempting to make romantic seascapes, but to find the expression of this wild and unpredictable character that scares, thrills, enraptures and heals. My work intends to investigate the magnetism of the wild, and to sacrifice the merely beautiful to what is unique and brief. That, in itself, is a metaphor for our lives. The movement and light of the sea seem to be particularly suited to pastel, itself a medium of light. As a medium, pastel has both density and transparency, a contradiction that is embodied by the ocean. As a symbol, waves are unique, and point to the individuality and brevity of our own lives.

ETCHING

I have been working with copper plates and various forms of etching for 30 years. My prints are a good counterpoint to the ease of pastel. Requiring hours of thought, concentration and a thorough knowledge of the many techniques possible to bring about an image, etching is a fine teacher for discipline and refinement. There are images that are just meant for black and white, some with broad areas of tone, some line. In printmaking, one must work with a ‘mirror image’, and the technical challenges mean you must “think” the image out well before beginning. Choosing the right medium is essential - mezzotint is wonderful for large areas of black tone and subtle gradations. Aquatint yields a painterly quality to large areas of black. The fuzzy line of dry point softens a line drawing and is appealing in its immediacy, and etching with hard ground is good for cross-hatching and fine line drawing. I enjoy working with all of these to depict the many beauties that surround me in my backwoods California landscape - the animals and plants and humans, the ranches, the forests, and the sea.