Andrew Totman, Earth’s Rotation, 2025, multi-plate monotype, 640 x 640 mm. Photo: Belco Arts.
Andrew Totman is an American-born, Sydney-based printmaker presenting a large, luxuriously glowing exhibition of non-figurative prints at Belco Arts.
In his printmaking, Totman creates complex, radiant images with inner luminosity that invite the viewer to enter them and explore their rich, ambiguous spaces.
Totman was born in Northern California and was awarded a Master of Fine Arts from Wichita State University and a BA from the University of San Diego. Subsequently, he has travelled extensively and has taught at universities in Alaska, California, Kansas and Australia. He has exhibited widely, with over 70 solo exhibitions to his credit all over the world. For the past few decades, he has called Australia home.
Andrew Totman, Many Forces, 2025, multi-plate monotype, 1120 x 760 mm. Photo: Belco Arts.
I was already in my teens when I first travelled abroad and in Europe visited some of the great Gothic cathedrals with their wonderful stained-glass windows. Here, as the light passed through the glass, you became enveloped in this kinetic fabric of vision as the multicoloured light dissolved all that surrounded me and placed me into a trance-like state.
The French 12th-century cleric, Abbott Suger, wrote of the experience of being in a church lit by stained-glass windows: “It seems to me that I see myself dwelling as it were, in some strange region of the universe which neither exists entirely in the slime of earth nor entirely in the purity of heaven.”
When I entered Totman’s exhibition, there was something of a related experience with the interior of the Pivot Gallery becoming like a shining and radiating reliquary full of the music of the spheres.
The artist speaks of his present series of work as inspired by “a glance back to recollections of a childhood fascinated by luminous, stained glass panels in church and the velvety darkness of a star-studded night sky. Reliant on repetition of shape and form, these images are essentially abstract”.
They represent Totman’s symbolic use of the sphere as a natural, organic form and a spiritual icon of the universe. Telescoping as though from an observatory, the spherical form strongly resonates with the night sky, the light haloes emanating from stars and the moon pulsating in a dark space.
Andrew Totman, Into the Deep, 2025, multi-plate monotype, 1120 x 760 mm. Photo: Belco Arts.
Technique is important to the realisation of the work. All of the prints are multi-plate monotypes; in other words, the artist has painted designs in ink onto the plate. The matrix is then passed through the press under high pressure, leaving an impression on the heavy, thick paper. This process is repeated several times, so the image builds in complexity and nuance.
When looking at prints like Earth’s Rotations, Into the Deep, Many Forces and Light Revealed, we are seeing a very experienced artist who, to some extent, is surrendering to the process. The way the ink will spread, combine, and react with the earlier layers cannot be fully anticipated. This means that the artist, to some extent, surrenders to chance and the element of chance becomes his creative collaborator.
The beauty of much of this work lies in the luminous colours and the quite exciting textured surfaces where there is a dynamic play between geometric forms and the watery organic flows of colour. There is an apparent freshness and unpredictability in the work, and as you dissolve into each individual print, there are all sorts of little discoveries to be made.
Andrew Totman, Light Revealed, 2025, multi-plate monotype, 1120 x 760 mm. Photo: Belco Arts.
On one level, it is technically a very sophisticated show, with subtle, rich colours, ambiguous forms, and constant perspectival games, with floating, suspended forms and plunging voids. On another level, it is a simple celebration and an expression of awe for the vast cosmic forces in the heavens and on earth that seem to rule our universe.
Andrew Totman, Star intersects, 2025, three-plate monotype, 500 x 500 mm. Photo: Belco Arts.
Andrew Totman, Seasons, Tides, and Lunar Cycles is now showing at Belco Arts, Pivot Gallery, 118 Emu Bank, Belconnen, Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am to 4 pm, until 22 March.
