Big River Banks is an aquatint and etching printed in color from three plates in 2019 by American artist Linda Lieberman. It is pencil signed, titled and editioned 3/5. Big River Banks was printed by the artist on ivory wove Rives paper at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco. The platemark measures 9-3/4 x 23-3/4 inches.
According to Meet Mendocino: There are beaches all up and down the Mendocino coast, but none is as iconic as Big River Beach. Located down the cliffs from the village of Mendocino, Big River is a sprawling sandy beach perfect for a little seaside fun, sunbathing, or splashing in the water. the beach itself changes its configuration from year to year, depending on how the storms have rearrange the channel. Some years there will be a massive lagoon on the northwest corner of the beach, while other years a channel will have formed, creating a larger sandbar island that can be waded out to.
Linda Lieberman, painter and printmaker, was born in California in 1945 but raised in Chicago, Illinois. By the age of ten years old, she was allowed to take the subway by herself so that she could attend Saturday art classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Lieberman speaks of becoming friends with various masterpieces that she walked past them on her route to the back of the Art Institute to her classroom.
Lieberman moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1967 after earning a B.S. in Art Education from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She traveled extensively, visiting legendary world sites and museums and eventually, in 1987, earned her M.A. from San Francisco State University. Lieberman had a thirty-year career teaching English as a second language at the College of Marin.
Beginning her art career as a painter, Lieberman’s interest turned to printmaking after taking a workshop in 2007. She is equally facile in relief and etching. Her etchings combine various techniques including hard ground, soap ground, and line etching. She prints her matrixes in black and white or, if using color, she employs three plates. Not having her own press, Lieberman has printed at Crown Point Press and extensively at the former City College of San Francisco (CCSF) classes at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco.
Linda Lieberman is a member of and exhibits with the California Society of Printmakers. Her etching and aquatint China Camp is illustrated on page 190 in California Society of Printmaker: One Hundred Years 1913-2013. She is represented in the collection of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
