"Leaping Together"

8" x 10" (image)
5-layer reduction woodcut
Edition of 5

This was a commission, which I was enthusiastic about making just because I've never made a woodcut of dolphins, or any animal shaped much like a dolphin. It was an interesting challenge to render an animal so smooth and shiny in a medium so course. Especially when I normally depict things with fur, and occasionally scales or feathers. I did find a connection in the form of camouflage and dissipation; in addition to going with monochromatic blues, I tried to echo some of the squiggles and shapes of the shadows/highlights on the dolphins in the moon and splash of water. And of course the horizontal woodgrain worked well giving the sky some depth and the water some texture. Overall I'm rather pleased.

One of Allen Seaby's Owls

(a found haiku)

hunter or hunted
whatever will be will be
joy and misery

"Dividing Hives in Spring" by Willy Reddick

Image posted with the permission of the artist. More of Willy Reddick's wonderful white line woodcuts and other artwork, jewelry, and ornaments can be viewed at her website.

It is spring! These celebrants of nature are suited up in loose, white costumes and fastidious as they perform their seasonal ritual. The browns will turn green, the greys will turn blue. The scent of fresh blooms will delight our sniffers while a cacophony of birds chirping and bees buzzing will fill the air.

"Pickaback" by Eliza Draper Gardiner

He refuses to wear shoes, which doesn't matter since he loves to be carried. She leans forward and walks at a slow pace into the still, dry air with him clung to her back. The sun hits them at an angle, warming their skin and casting a long shadow on the sand, which is sparsely littered with wrappers, toys, and other evidence of the day's human presence. There aren't enough clouds in the sky to produce a fantastic sunset. Instead, the colors are soft and even. However, the play between the contrasting cool hues is quite lovely, and certainly worthy of taking notice.

"Nightwalker" by Holly Meade

Image posted with the permission of the artist. More of Holly Meade's work can be found at her website.

As I move through the forest, all the branches, leaves, buds, and blooms in the foreground expand and disappear, leaving room for more and more of the same. Dry leaves crunch under my feet. I look down at uneven layers of bark, twigs, and soil, and it occurs to me that I'm walking on eons of broken down corpses. I think of the multitude of small rodents, bugs, and roots that make up a whole other dark, squirmy and moist underground world. I'm walking on that, too. It's night now, and the only reason I can see anything is the beams of moonlight which criss-cross from surface to surface. It's so easy to get lost here. How much times has passed? Ten minutes? An hour? I just don't know. I've become so divorced from this sort of experience, I feel like an alien visiting another planet. But really I'm from here.

Suddenly, out of all the blue-black debris and into the most brightly moon-lit spot steps a deer. I stop and cautiously look up to examine this native inhabitant, and to my surprise encounter a familiar face.

"A was an artist" by Sir William Nicholson

This is from Sir William Nicholson's book An Alphabet, first published in 1898.

A print-maker and mentor I knew once said, "After we finish making it, it's dead to us." I've often pondered that melancholy statement. Indeed, once the process of making, the relationship with the piece is over, the artist might still feel a deep attachment, but the lover is gone.

That said, these works of art are often said to take on a new life of their own, a new relationship with the world, when introduced to an audience. So maybe the completion of a work of art is less like the death of a relative or loss of a lover, and more like watching a child become an adult and move on.

Any way I look at it, it is a loss.

"Shepherd Boy"

4-layer reduction woodcut
5.5" x 8" (image)

I was really excited about this print while I was making it, but alas, it's one of those that left me completely disappointed in the end. The light blue is too light in many places, and the orange and green are too washed out to stand along; there really needed to be one more layer of medium value before the final layer of dark blue. Why have I been so timid with my color execution these past couple years? And how can I get over these troublesome apprehensions?

The original drawing had been truly lovely, but since I drew this one directly on the block, that drawing is now destroyed. I think this should have been a white line woodcut.As this is a reduction, I can't go back into this (except to paint over the individual prints, which I might do.)

I did stay up until 2:30am two nights in a row working on this, and that was exhilarating. Nice to really savor the process, even if in this case the product was a letdown. And hell, so long as I'm paying attention, I can learn from my mistakes.