A selection of prints by local artist Frank Burgers is on display at the Benalla Art Gallery shop.
The exhibition, which will run throughout February, includes linocuts, woodblock prints, and copperplate etchings spanning the past decade, and traversing abstract expressionism, landscape and figurative works.
Mr Burgers first explored printmaking, particularly copperplate etching, as a student at Ballarat College of Advanced Education (now Federation University) in 1984 and 1985.
However, a sustained printmaking practice was challenging with limited access to a press.
In 2016, through the art and craft shop Shades of Art, which Mr Burgers ran with his wife, he participated in a series of workshops on linocuts, informed by pastel drawings he had been working on.
Around this period Mr Burgers also found some suitable wooden panels from an old bed head board, which became his first woodblock prints.
“At the time my work was mostly figurative,” Mr Burgers said.
“The work is a response to battles with my conscience.
“On the one hand I took inspiration from emotional turmoil, on the other, giving creative expression to complex feelings was a form of therapy.”
Following this series, a prolonged period of painting abstractions followed.
However, Mr Burgers has returned to printmaking in recent years following an introduction to master printmaker John Loane.
“John is a master printmaker and a terrific artist himself, specialising in lithography and intaglio printing,” he said.
“He has worked with some of the most prominent artists from the 70s to the present day, many of whom are represented by major national institutions.
“John himself won second at the Castlemaine Experimental Printmaking Awards last year.
“I had some copperplates left over from the shop, and with John’s encouragement, and access to a fully equipped printmaking workshop here in Benalla, I developed a number of plates, presented in this Gallery Shop exhibition.
“Developing these plates was more involved then I remembered from my college days.
“Initially the results were rather disappointing, but as with all creative work, enormous amounts of perseverance and determined pursuit to find a satisfying image eventually gave results.
“Some plates took eight or nine proofs with substantial reworking of the plate in between, to get the image to work.”