Harlan Mathieu

Harlan Mathieu was born in Iowa and studied visual arts and theater at Grinnell College. He went on to study printmaking with Mauricio Lasansky at the University of Iowa, receiving an M.F.A. in 1981.  Mathieu moved to New York City and began exhibiting his work with Associated American Artists and through independent exhibitions.  After a brief stint teaching at a college as a sabbatical replacement in Michigan, he returned to NYC in 1990. He then began to focus on the single-color woodcut, which has remained his primary medium.  Mathieu has long associations with The New York Society of Etchers and the Bob Blackburn Printmaking Workshop.  He served on the board of the Brooklyn Waterfront Artist Coalition and is a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists.

Narrative has always played a major role in his imagery - a carryover from his work in theater, and working for a decade at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (absorbing its encyclopedic collection), plus the playfulness gleaned from twenty-five years of teaching art to young children.  Consistently figurative, his subject matter often draws heavily on classical mythology, fairy tales, and oral histories, both European and Native American.  But it is the moment of personal revelation that has always interested him, the brief seconds when the central figures experience the greatest insight or emotion.

“The directness of the technique of the single-color woodcut, and the relative simplicity of execution, has allowed me a great deal of freedom of expression in my work.  And after fifty years, the media has shown no signs of exhausting its possibilities.  The trick, of course, is to make the viewer forget they are looking at a print, or even to forget that the image that they are looking at is presented in black and white.”