Saturday, July 31, 2021

Wood Engraving/Paintings by Rosemary Feit Covey

A friend of mine who is a collector told me today that he and his wife recently purchased a new print for their home.  They called it a "woodcut painting". As a printmaker I was intrigued by this description and wanted to learn more. I was so impressed with what I learned about Rosemary Feit Covey, I wanted to share it with the BWAC community. 

Crossing the Line

Wood engraving and painting
72 x 60 inches

My friends bought a print from Covey very much like the one above.


Rosemary Feit Covey was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her work is housed in more than forty major museum and library collections worldwide, including the original collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the New York Public Library Print Collection, the National Museum of American History, Harvard University, and the Papyrus Institute in Cairo, Egypt.


In 2012, five hundred of her prints were acquired for the permanent collection of Georgetown University Library, Special Collections. She is the recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship (Bellagio Italy), an Alpha Delta Kappa Foundation National Fine Art Award, and a fellowship to Georgetown University Medical Center as the 2007–2008 Artist-in-Residence.

Her solo museum exhibitions include the Butler Museum of American Art, the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts, and the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago. In 2014, a retrospective of her prints, paintings, and installation work was featured at Johns Hopkins University’s Evergreen Museum. Articles on her work have been featured in publications including Art in America, Juxtapoz, and American Artist Magazine.

Of her extensive body of work, it is the wood engraving paintings I find the most compelling. I hope you will take 4 minutes and watch this video of Rosemary talking about her work. One very interesting caveat I had not considered is when and why we might NOT want to know what an artist was thinking when they created a piece of art. She makes a very compelling case why knowing can create a problem for the viewer. 





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