Bay Bluffs

Linda Lieberman

A view of the bluffs along San Pablo Bay as seen from China Camp, just north of San Francisco, California. Summer grases and coyote brush color the fore- and mid-ground, while bay and cypress trees billow out in the background. Lieberman has depicted a quiet day with little disturbance of the water, just right for sitting on the shore and listening to birdsongs.

China Camp State Park is located in Marin County, California and surrounds a historic Chinese American shrimp-fishing village and salt marsh, the subject of this color aquatint. According to the Friends of China Camp, China Camp's salt marshes provide protected habitat for wildlife, including the Salt marsh harvest mouse and Ridgway's Rail. The park's salt marshes represent the most intact wetlands remaining in the San Francisco Bay estuary.

Using the tonal qualities of the aquatint technique, Lieberman richly illuminates the subtleties of color and texture found along the Northern California coast. Of particular interest to Lieberman is the biodiverse region of Marin County, whose wetlands, beaches, old fishing villages, and gnarled cypress are recurring themes in both her intaglio and relief prints.

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.

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 Printmakers: One Hundred Years 1913-2013. She is represented in the collection of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.