Expose Yourself Virtual Gallery

bowls

dragonfly

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ELKE THONNES,
originally from Cologne, I began my training at the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste, Kassel but moved to Dublin in 1988 to finish my studies at the NCAD in Dublin. I Graduated in 1991 with an honors degree in Fine Art-Painting and shortly afterwards formed, with five other graduates, an all female studio called ‘ Hang Ten Studio’.

I have exhibited quite extensively in my native Germany and here in Ireland where I have shown at The Dun Laoghaire Arts Festival, the Boyle Arts Festival and Repeatedly at the Kilkenny Arts Festival.
In 1992 I contributed to the ‘Biennale Internationale d’Art Minitature’ in Montreal, Canada.  In 1994 I won the ‘ Aisling 1994 ‘ Adjudicators Award, having previously won numerous Arts Council Bursaries and the ‘Iontas 91’ Best Student Work Award.

I would describes my work as mixed media on board using plaster as a foundation which then is treated in the tradition of old mural techniques with raw pigment and shellac sometimes incorporating exotic papers and beeswax.

In 2002 I started to focus on the discipline of print making as artistic expression, first training under the well known printmaker Cliana Doyle then with Mary Fitzgerald and Anthony Little.
My current work is divided into two categories, firstly monoprints that are largely based on representation of landscape in a minimalist manner. Secondly plantbased prints largely due to the fact that besides art my greatest love is gardening. I often work my prints into multilayerd collages using handmade papers and handdied variegated silk and cotton embroidery thread therby creating highly coloured ‘gardens’.