Artist Profiles - Printmakers

Profiling Australian and New Zealand Printmakers

Lawrence Finn

Lawrence’s work explores the silence between the human experience, love, loss, fear, passion; those emotions that sit just outside of what is felt and what is allowed to be said out loud. He’s fascinated by the human psyche and uses reworked medieval iconography and allegory to examine exactly why we are and what we eat.

Finn specialises in lino cut and wood engraved work; mostly producing ugly stories for beautiful people or as one critic put it “sometimes wry observations of the contemporary Australian cultural condition”. He tries to produce work that is both aesthetically reconciled and also has a slightly deeper level of discourse than the common commodity based postcards which are produced in abundance within the Australian visual arts sector. Lawrence playfully engages with post Jungian psychology and the theories of the Situationist International to deliver a razor blade inside an apple pie.

biography
Lawrence was 16 when he began his studies in art (printmaking) at the East Sydney Technical College, School of Fine Arts (1986-1989). Finn followed this at the University of New South Wales, College of Fine Arts 1991-92 as a printmaking technician shortly thereafter he pursued a Post Graduate Diploma from Sydney College of the Arts (University of Sydney – 1993).

In 2007, Lawrence completed a Master of Fine Art in Printmaking at the National Art School, East Sydney and in between he traveled to Europe and the USA, where he studied artists printmakers and worked as a tattooist. In 2025 he completed a Master of Teaching qualification.

Finn’s Masters thesis was about that love, exploring the social and individual benefits of art while asking awkward questions about why we have so many artists and art schools in a country which (fiscally speaking) does not love art. Art; has wonderful benefits for individuals and society. For some, it makes money, for many more it gives them life. Art is important, it helps people.

Finn’s work can be found in a number of esteemed Institutions, Galleries and Libraries in Australia and overseas.