Berenice Sydney

The British born artist Berenice Sydney was one of the most expressive original printmakers working in England during the late 1960's and early 1970's. Although Berenice, as she preferred to be called, was both born and lived in England, her art is essentially European in feeling - though Berenice succeeded in fusing the European origins of her style with the sense of liberation and freedom of expression which prevailed in England during the 1960's. More than this, she developed her own lyrical and highly expressive graphic style which was entirely independent of the dominating influences of Pop Art.

Berenice Sydney first became interested in printmaking in 1966. During the following year she visited the Greek Islands of the Aegean and it was here that she found the inspiration for her first mythological subject drawings and her impressive black linocuts. These linocuts were designed in 1968 and exhibited in the same year at the Edinburgh Festival. The stark simplicity of their design is strikingly expressive in its impact. In these works the influence of both Matisse and Picasso is clear. Almost all of Berenice Sydney's linocuts of this nature are now very rare indeed, having been limited to either extremely small and probably incomplete editions, or only artist's proofs.

Berenice was a lover of dancing, ballet, and music, and her graphic work reflects this prevailing inspiration in its rhythmic, harmonious fluency of form and movement. As Berenice Sydney's style developed, she abandoned figurative representation for total abstraction, in which geometric or freely composed forms create expressive or rhythmic compositions. Berenice's experiments of this nature have been described as creating her own "floating cosmos". The exploding planes of this liberated work express joy, exhilaration, and the artist's extraordinary freedom of spirit.