B.

Sue Cooke was born in Sydney in 1960. She studied printmaking with Barry Cleavin and Denise Copland at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts and graduated with Honours in 1984. Her work tends to expand on traditional printing techniques as she strives to express her personal ideas and reactions to the landscape.

Panorama stretches the print format to an extremely large work measuring 23m x 1.6m. With a print this length our vision can be completely encircled by a panoramic span of 180°. On the continuous surface a variety of mark making techniques signal Sue's responses to the solidity, rhythm and forms of the encircling mountains and the wide open spaces of the high country lake. Areas of rich black ink contrast with the raw canvas and interact with the freedom of line and tone.

Part of the immediacy in the rhythms and forms of Panorama lies in the fact that the plates were drawn on the site, on the tussock covered foreshore of the lake. After a series of full-scale preliminary drawings, Sue Cooke worked at Ohau, directly onto the large cardboard plates. Later they were cut at the studio in Christchurch and printed, using the intaglio technique, onto the continuous length of canvas.

Large scale works expressing a personal response to the land have their predecessor in the 1958 Northland Panels of McCahon and photographic panoramic views have been with us some time. However Panorama - a print based on the landscape of Lake Ohau is surely the first print where a New Zealand printmaker has tackled such a large and challenging project.

This project was assisted by a grant from the Queen Elizabeth Arts Council.

('Sue Cooke: Panorama – A print based on the landscape at Lake Ohau', Bulletin, No.52, July/August 1987, p.4)