Master printmaker and painter Raymond Arnold was born in Victoria in 1950 and moved to Tasmania in 1983. Under the influence of the island’s natural environment, Raymond developed his career to become a printmaker and painter of international reputation. Raymond’s legacy to Tasmanian art is well established and in 2006, he established Landscape Art Research Queenstown (LARQ), a non-profit studio and gallery in the mining town of Queenstown in Tasmania’s west, and has almost single handedly transformed the mining town into an arts-hub.
Raymond’s works speak of the Western Tasmanian landscape like no other, masterfully describing, as if in geological time, the ongoing processes of restoration, resurrection and respite that this unique wilderness offers and endures. In his detailed prints, the velvet darkness of the etched line, skilfully describes the fleeting play of day light as it breaks over the facets of an ancient, troubled landscape. The works capture eons in instants, secret joys in darkness and shadows and softness in the harshest of places.
Raymond Arnold’s work has been featured in several significant group exhibitions at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra including ‘Pre-settlement to present’ in 1989, ‘My head is a Map – Prints of the Decade’ in 1992 and ‘Federation: Australian Art and Society 1901-2001’. Arnold has completed commissions for both the National Gallery of Australia and the Print Council of Australia and was awarded an Australia Council Fellowship in 1992.
Since 1993 Raymond has regularly spent time refining his own etching technique at the esteemed Attelier Parisian studio of Lacourière et Frélaut. Raymond is a Glover Prize winning (twice) artist who has held more than 50 solo exhibitions and participated in group shows in Australia, Europe and the USA. His work can be found in the collections of the Imperial War Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Bibliotheque Nationale and the Musee Courbet in France, as well as the National Gallery, the Australian Parliament House and all state galleries in Australia.