Plant Forms

Doris Seidler

Doris Seidler and her family arrived in the US in 1940 from England where she began to study printmaking with Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17 in New York and spent almost 10 years working there.

Seidler had been an amateur artist in England before her marriage and later, in her husband's business absences, Hayter accepted her as a participant in his wartime printmaking classes in New York in 1940, exposing her to the experimental approachs of Atelier 17. After returning to England in 1945 she emigrated to the US in 1948 and returned to working in the New York studio into the 1950s.

As an associate of Hayter's she learned not only the diverse techniques of gravure, but a philosophy centered on Hayter's overriding principle, "adequate motive", which meant that superb skills are not enough.

Most of the printmakers at Atelier 17 were concentrating on immediacy, spontaneity combined with various intaglio techniques to create the composition. For this intaglio Seidler used a combination of etching, aquatint, gouger and burin engraving to achieve a broad variety of lines, tones, and textures.

Doris' son, David Seidler, went on to become a screenwriter, winning an Oscar for his screenplay "The King's Speech", based in his own experiences with stammering which developed when the family came to America by ship during WWII.