Sculptor Profile

 

Gretchen Albrecht

Since graduating from the Elam School of Fine Arts in 1963, Gretchen Albrecht has exhibited widely including exhibitions in Australasia, Europe and the USA. Her work is represented in all the major public and private art collections in New Zealand. Albrecht’s art has been the subject of four major public gallery survey exhibitions in New Zealand: AFTERnature (1986), Crossing The Divide (1999) Illuminations (2002), Returning (2005). In 2006 a documentary film on her life and art, Reflections – Gretchen Albrecht, was produced and directed by Bates Productions. Since 2003 Albrecht has spent part of each year living and working in a studio in South London. Recent works have been shown in the Netherlands, Spain, Hong Kong and Australia. Albrecht is well-known for her abstract paintings that capture her response to the colours of nature, progressing through compositional formats from rectangular colour band paintings, to hemisphere and later oval shapedcanvases. Navigating Oriental Waters (Wellington Harbour) continues in three dimensions her exploration of the natural environment. The colours and elements are derived from the visual experience of light and movement on the harbour, conflated from a range of vantage points.