A Predominance of Linocuts
This is a new site and a new reason to write! I have been very, very busy since you last heard from me. I have been in the deep end of something like a linocut renaissance. You see, I very much disliked making linocuts way back when I was learning to be a printmaker. Etching was the process for me, hands down. I still love etching; I still make etchings and teach my students how to make them. However, relief has captured my imagination for a variety of reasons (more on this in the future). Linocuts, in particular have consumed almost all of my image making in the last year or so.
This is not to say that my obsession with making books has abated – not at all. Where do you think the ideas for linocuts come from? I make drawings, they infiltrate my brain, inform my way of thinking, drive my wife to distraction and then end up as prints.
Several so-so prints that have been collaged and doctored. Don’t throw anything away.
In fact, many of my linocuts make it into the books as finished prints. When I have a bad print (it happens), I keep it and try to do something with it. Maybe it’s under inked and can be watercolored (one reason to never print in water based inks); maybe it’s over inked, but a part of it can be excised and used as part of a collage; or maybe I think of something else. Who knows?
Anyway, I’ve been making a lot of linocuts. Some of them are the most complicated I’ve attempted both in terms of conception and in terms of the intricacy of the cutting. I’ll be writing about all of this as I work through it.
