LISA MATTHIAS: Entangled Forms

This selection of woodcuts and etchings brings together abstracted forms drawn from Alberta peatlands, bird nests, and botanical structures. Working between observation and abstraction, Lisa Matthias explores the textures, patterns, and relationships within living landscapes.

Spanning several years of printmaking, these works reflect Matthias’s ongoing interest in the intersection of art and science. Research in museum collections, the study of botanical specimens, field observation, and collaborations with scientists offer different ways of looking closely at the natural world. Her hand-carved and hand-printed works on paper range from dense, nearly abstract fields to recognizable natural fragments. Within and across images, forms overlap, accumulate, and intertwine.

Entangled Forms encompasses a range of scales and printmaking approaches, from intimate works to expansive woodcuts measuring up to eight feet long. Alongside Matthias’s longstanding work in black and white, new explorations of colour through oil-based woodcut and water-based mokuhanga draw on the distinct qualities of each process to explore mark-making, layering, texture, and expression.