Visual Arts / Wood Engravings and Drypoints, by Tanya Myshkin. At Megalo Print Studios until June 29. Reviewed by KERRY-ANNE COUSINS.

Tanya Myshkin has had an art practice in the Canberra region for many years.

In the late 1980s she studied at the former Canberra School of Art print workshop with Gillian Mann and Jorg Schmeisser and later was artist-in-residence in the Art Edition and Artists book studio with Dianne Fogwell and Petr Herel.

Some of her early recorded exhibitions in Canberra were at Studio One in the 1990s and this is where I bought her small drypoint etching of a moth. At the time I was transfixed by the precision of her depiction of insects and spiders, work informed by close observation.

A group of these early works are in this current survey exhibition of her drypoint and wood engravings from over a period of 40 years. While not being comprehensive in number, the works on display do give an insight into this very individualistic artist who has always followed a very personal creative vision.

Myshkin finds beauty and interest in nature in both its aspects of life and death. In other works, Myshkin confronts the human condition and through her images of the human form attempts to express the complexity of human emotions.

The early group (1990s) of small wood engraving, etching and drypoint prints capture, as if under a microscope, the small world of beetles, spiders, ants and flies. The artist is highly skilled in the painstaking rendering of the complex surface of textures found in each tiny specimen. In the work The Huntsman Spider (11x9cm) a complex network of tiny lines delineates the texture of the spider’s hairy legs. A related work called Frightened Huntsman the spider is beautifully observed crouching as if to take flight from danger.

Myshkin is not afraid to represent dead creatures. It can be confronting to be faced with these images of dead mice and rats, the mice shown in macabre poses and indeed in one print (Five Dead Mice) forming a kind of bizarre dance of death. We bring to these images of dead rats and mice our own prejudices conditioned by our human history that intertwines their lives with ours. Yet these dead creatures are not shown as specimens pinned in a specimen case but as creatures that were once alive but now have a strange beauty preserved as an image by the artist.

A group of large works focuses on the human form. These prints are executed on the very hard cross grain surfaces of yellow box and red gum. The wood is cut from the fallen tree in some cases leaving its bark intact to form a framework. The artist then painstakingly carves her image into its surface. The fissures of the wood are left to become white lines transcribing the images.

The block is too large to print in a conventional way so single sheets of paper are placed on its surface and the print transferred. This is a painstaking process and the technique means only a small number of unique prints will result. The images, such as the figure of Jonah, are compressed within the natural contours made by the wood. The figure emerging from its black womb-like background seems as gnarled as the wood itself. Jonah’s hands are curled and his body twisted into a distorted form. In another work (Carousel) two figures intertwine their limbs seemingly melting into one another in a spinning wheel of life.

These are strong and emotive works. They reflect a personal view of the world in which images of dead mice, insects and the human form can co- exist as important facets of the same natural universe.