"The Flood"

Woodcut (reduction)
11" x 16"(image) 12.5" x 18.5" (paper)
Watercolors and waterbased printmaking inks on heavy Arches paper
Available for purchase here. 

This was a commission for some friends, with which I had a great deal of creative freedom. I played around a lot with some new materials (watercolors applied with brushes instead of only block printing inks applied with brayers) and used the highly emphasized wood grain in a new way. I am quite pleased with both the process and the final products. I did a total of four unique versions of the image from the block. This was my second favorite version, but it looks the best in digital reproduction, so I decided to use it instead of my favorite one for this blog post.

I thought I'd write something deeply poetic about this print on this blog post as I often do, but I just can't. The print itself is just so fantastically bizarre and colorful that I don't want to narrow anyone's perceptions with my own ideas about the meaning and narrative. Hell, I don't even want to narrow my own by committing the ideas that happen to be passing through my head right now to paper. Er, screen. I'll just say I'm really glad I made this. I love my babies and cats and toy prints, but I needed to do something more ambitious and, well, weird. I hope this will lead to other interesting avenues with regards to both subject matter and technique. We shall see...