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Monika de Vries Gohlke

b.1940, Berlin, Germany

Monika de Vries Gohlke was born in Berlin, Germany. After immigrating to the U.S. she attended the Parsons School of Design for a three-year program in Graphic Design. She also received a one-year Max Beckman scholarship at the Brooklyn Museum art school.

Upon graduation, she worked as a designer of textiles, rugs, paper and tabletop products for a number of clients, among them Polo/Ralph Lauren, Williams-Sonoma, Inc. and Caspari.

In her personal art she paints in watercolors and makes intaglio line etchings and aquatints depicting contemporary versions of botanical and natural sciences art. She is a member of the American Society of Botanical Artists, the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators and a Fellow of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Florilegium Society, an organization collecting paintings depicting specimen of the plant collections of the Garden.

Monika prints at the Manhattan Graphics Center, where she creates her copperplate etchings, using the techniques of line etching, aquatint, dry point, chine colle and hand-coloring.

Her work has been exhibited in the U.S. as well as abroad and is collected privately and for public institutions. Her etchings can be found in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of New York, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., the Print Collection of the New York Public Library, NY, the Newark Public Library, NJ, the State Museum in Albany, N.Y. and the Hunt Institute for Botanical Illustration, Pittsburgh, PA, the major collection of botanical art in the U.S.

Monika has received numerous awards for her work and her paintings and etchings have been reproduced in a number of catalogues published by the American Society of Botanical Artists, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators.

Exhibits this year (2013) included the Sixteenth Annual ASBA/HSNY International Juried Exhibition at the Horticultural Society in N.Y.C., the 3rd Annual International Intaglio Exhibit, NYSociety of Etchers at the National Arts Club, NY, the 3rd Juried Annual Exhibit (Juror: Roberta Waddell) at the Manhattan Graphics Center, NY and "Illuminations: Botanicals and Birds", Newhouse Galleries at the Manor House, Planting Fields Arboretum, State Historic Park, Oyster Bay, NY.

Upcoming exhibitions in 2014 will include work at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, in a show themed "Wild, Weird and Wonderful" and the "Focus on Nature 13" art exhibit of Natural Science work at the Albany State Museum, NY.