Award-Winning Printmaker, Nicol Sanders-O'Shea

Nicol Sanders-O'Shea East of Eden

She is always busy preparing work for upcoming shows, and receives many invitations to exhibit her work nationally and in Australia. 

In 2015, Nicol won the Waikato Society of Arts Supreme Award for the New Zealand painting and printmaking Award for her diptych titled Exchanges. Her work East of Eden recently won a Merit Award in the Molly Morpeth Canaday Awards 2016.

Judge Richard Fahey writes “This work reimagines various well-worn graphic tropes through the sensibility of an artist steeped in print culture. This is a witty skew on the familiar and domestic, a collage from many sources, executed with a pop sensibility. ‘East of Eden’ offers a nuanced view of the not-so-utopian, up close and personal.”

Nicol says ”My work is created using multiple screen-printed illustrations and found object stencils. I use the process of screen-printing to construct the work, built up in several layers to subvert or disrupt the implied meaning in my investigation of memory, fiction and interpretation.

It is an attempt to create a visual record of my mixed recollection and observations, as child or parent, something I have witnessed past or present, reality or fiction. My work supports and contradicts the reproductive nature of the printmaking process. These print works are not editioned; instead I play with repetitive and reproductive printed elements within each work.”

Nicol Sanders-O’Shea – Additional Research Outputs

Sanders-O’Shea, N. (2015). WSA New Zealand Painting and Printmaking Award Exhibition of finalists. Hamilton Gardens, Hamilton as part of the Hamilton Arts Festival. 13 – 22 February.

Sanders-O’Shea, N. (2015) First Impressions II. National Printmaking Award Exhibition. Mairanga Art Centre, Auckland, 4 -28 March.

Sanders-O’Shea, N. (2015) East 2014 (2 works). Hastings City Art Gallery 15 November 2014 – 15 February 2015. ISSN 2382-2015.

Sanders-O’Shea, N. (2015) Printmaking: Beyond the frame (23 works). Tauranga Art Gallery, Tauranga, 8 August – 18 October. ISBN 978-0-991086-0-9.

Sanders-O’Shea, N. (2015) ‘Group Show’ (multiple works), with Aroha Gossage, Laura McMillan, Janis Marler Harkness, Barbara Chapple. Northart Gallery, Auckland, 4 – 19 April.