Two Artistic Undertakings
Woodcut Prints
For forty years I have created woodcut prints. Woodcuts are based on a time consuming process of sketching and drafting images, tracing the images on multiple pieces of wood, carving away some of the wood from each wood surface, rolling ink on the surface remaining, and pressing paper against each prepared wood plate. Realistic, three dimensional looking images emerge from detailed patterns of tiny hatches marching across large (two by three foot) pieces of paper.
Over the years the images became more detailed, and took longer to render. The final years of production yielded one work a year.
Acrylic Paintings
In Fall 2021 I gave away the printing press and retired from woodcut production, in favor of painting with acrylics. They too have become time intensive and process oriented. To begin a painting, colors are blocked in and the work looks like canvass covered in plastic, which it is. It is by layering on more paint, combining and reshaping colors that a finished painting emerges. Instead of tiny hatches, subjects are rendered in varying colors which flow into or collide with each other.
My Approach
The two media work similarly for me, in their use of color and light. Think of a subject’s surface in the world-the side of a house, or the side of a face. The surface is lit by changing light as your eye travels across it—from shadow to brighter light, from higher to lower reflectivity, from nearer to further away. Both media capture the changing light with changing color. The colors flow smoothly or alternate abruptly. Capture the colors and the light, process them and the feelings they create, and the art works.
