Linocut Prints

These linocut prints are examples from a large ongoing suite of black and white linocuts which date from 1993. These are the source prints from which the Tesserae series derives. Linocut, like woodblock printing, is a relief printmaking technique, the only difference being the medium into which I carve my image (ie., linoleum, as opposed to wood). My subject matter comprises both inside (still lifes) and outside (landscapes), sometimes both within the same print. My interest in black and white linocut lies in its uncompromising graphic directness, and the challenges it presents to the painter in me, whose great pleasure is working in colour. In the absence of colour, in these prints I have had to rely on other visual qualities and formal elements: composition, texture, pattern and the range of marks available to the linocut technique. Working in this medium has been an enormously informative experience, and I think the influence of working in linocut is evident in my recent gouaches.

Print Collages

The works in this portfolio are from an ongoing suite of polychrome linocut print collages titled Tesserae.*  Each is a one-of-a-kind composite of square linocut “tiles.”

The iconography in this series ranges from the familiar to the more enigmatic/esoteric, and derives from a mosaic of sources: from my own lares et penates (household gods); from art history (with quotations ranging from Classical statuary to paintings by Kandinsky and Hockney); from Classical archetypal symbols; from landscape. There are many little dialogues between images within the works.

The collages in this body of work fall into one of two categories:

Still Life Narratives: The structure of these works is intended to suggest a narrative sequence with the plot, an intentional enigma, to be deciphered by the reader.

Landscape Fragments: images cropped from favourite landscapes in which I have lived, worked, hiked, or travelled: landscapes which have inspired not only through their infinite variety of textures, rhythms, colours, or sculptural shapes, but through the spirit of the place.

*Tessera: (pl. tesserae) noun. Each of the small square pieces of marble, glass, tile etc. of which a mosaic or the like is made. Usually in plural. From the Attic Greek tessares, meaning four, from its having four corners.