In the meantime....

While I'm working on getting photos of paintings, here's a casual photo of a reduction woodcut done for a Baren print exchange. It's called "Barney at the Beach" and is done from a photo I took on a freezing cold, windy day in November. A man was throwing a ball for his two dogs, who ran again and again into the surf to get it, not minding the frigid water. The image is 10" x 7" and is really rectangular. The odd shape is because I took the pic while the print is still hanging to dry. I wish it would hurry up; it's supposed to be in the mail today! 

The Baren forum is an online group of printmakers who exchange original relief prints and information on techniques, ideas, sources, etc. It's a great group! They're at: http://www.barenforum.org/. 

Relief in Relief

I had started this woodcut before my brother died; working on it afterward helped a lot. I was doing something creative, but, as I had already started it, the work was mostly craft. This woodcut, titled New Dawn, is one of 60 by different artists that have been created as a fundraiser for the victims of the Japan tsunami. Barbara Mason, of the Baren Forum (http://www.barenforum.org/), an on-line, relief-technique print forum, started the ball rolling. The prints will be sold both in portfolios and singly. There will be several exhibitions of the prints, the first at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon August 4-18. You can see the other prints here: http://www.barenforum.org/japan/index.html. The title of the exhibition is Relief in Relief, which applied to my making the print as well as to the focus on Japan.

I took some photos of the work in progress; I'll post them later. The size of the image is 8.5" x 6" and is printed in 5 colors on Rives lightweight paper.

About Time

It's been awhile, plus those hornworms are pretty ugly, so here goes with something I hope is better. I have a few things in McGowan Fine Art's Love, Lust & Desire show; here are two of them. Backside Bouquet is a small (8" x 8") oil on panel of a flower arrangement that was on the table at a friend's wedding. I had painted the same flowers from the front with a lighter background earlier, thus the odd title. The other painting is a close-up watercolor (about 10" x 7") of an amaryllis I have that has bloomed about 12 years in a row. Right now, it's in sleep mode. One of my prints is in this year's Prints of the Year show. Info on both shows is at right. One of my New Year resolutions is to -um- blog more often. In a couple of days, I'm off for a few days of painting the snow in Vermont. I'll post again when I get back. Really!

Blog Change and Mouse

Because recently I've been receiving bunches of spamish posts that I've had to delete, I've added the (rather annoying) code-word filter to the blog. From now on, anyone who wants me to gamble or to buy certain medicinal products from China will have to at least be a real person who can read and type. This means that the rest of you will have to put in the code word you're given when you want to post a comment. At least, sometimes, they're pretty funny.

As a little consolation, here's a woodcut I did for an exchange awhile back: "Sin Nombre," a four-color woodcut, 4" x 4" on Japanese mulberry paper. Sin Nombre is the Spanish word for the hantavirus, a fairly rare but deadly disease contained in some mouse droppings. My interpretation of the virus is in the background of the harmless-looking mousie. It doesn't show well on the monitor, but in the original print the background ink is gold.

More Snow

Since it's snowing here in New Hampshire, I thought it would be a good time to post "Snowscape" (4.75" x 8.25", oil-based inks on Japanese Mulberry paper), a woodcut I did for a print exchange. The theme was typography. I had a giant wooden dollar-sign block that I got at a letterpress fair last summer (see the previous steam roller printing post) and used that as a jumping-off place for a design. I wanted to use the block just as an abstract design element, with no reference to money, the economy, etc. It looks quite plain, but I used 3 Shina plywood blocks, plus the $, and five colors to make the print. There's a version of it hanging in the "Prints of the Year" show at the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord NH until April 2, 2010.

Face to face

I'm posting this woodcut (done a couple of years ago) as an illustration of an exciting incident I had last night. Just after dark, I stepped outside the back door. I was a couple of feet away from the corner of the house and saw an animal just coming around from the other side. I kind of gasped and the animal huffed and turned around. I ran in the house and turned on the floodlight out front, thinking I'd seen a big dog or something. There was a full-grown black bear, just crossing over the driveway! My knees knocked for awhile. I've seen quite a few bears over the years, but never as close as 2-3 feet. Whew!

Ms Liberty

This woodcut of a nude has nothing to do with the show, "Love, Lust & Desire," that I mentioned in an earlier post. I did it for an exchange, the theme of which was "Nudes." 

The show opening was great fun! The McGowan gallery was jammed with people the entire time. Two of the four paintings I have in the show have sold. They happened to be the ones I posted here. Many other paintings went off to happy buyers, too. Who says we're in a recession? (OK, they were all small, 8.5" x 11" or less, and pretty low-priced, under $300. But still.) 

Illawarra Plum

This is a reduction woodcut that I did for a print exchange. It's oil-based ink on mulberry, 8" x 6" and has colored pencil added for the plums. I'm not completely happy with the green; in retrospect I would have made it lighter. The plant is native to Australia; I used Internet references and made up my version of it. 

Another View

This is the same woodcut, printed with the same ink, as the previous post, but done on thin Chine colle paper, then glued to heavier Rives BFK. It looked to me as if Steve was paddling into the sunset. I like trying out different ways of using a block, which is partly why most of my editions are "open." 

Steady Drift

This is my latest woodcut print, done for another exchange. The theme this time was "Journey." My reference was a photo I took of my husband Steve on his first kayaking trip. He's wearing an enormous life jacket because he sinks like a stone when he tries to swim. This was a point where he had stopped paddling for a moment and was just enjoying the solitude and beauty of Hoit Road Marsh. However, he was still moving, as the ripples signify. I like the idea of a journey continuing, even if we stop our frantic paddling now and then. I started this image as a reduction print, but due to life getting in the way, ran out of time, so did it in one color instead, using a new block. At some point, I'll continue the reduction print and see what happens. 

Cecilia

Here's my latest woodcut, "Cecilia, Lily of Heaven." It was created for an exchange with the theme of "Canterbury Tales." I picked the second nun's tale, in which an angel gives a crown of lilies to Cecilia and a crown of roses to her mate, Valerian. Cecilia dies a horrible, bloody death in the end, but I decided to go for the less gory part of the story. Tori, my 14-year-old granddaughter, posed for me, wearing a crown I made using fake lilies. Instead of clearing away all the background, I left much of the wood in the area of the hair so that it would print as hairy texture. The image is 8" x 6", printed with oil-based inks on Rives lightweight paper. This version of Rives is easier to print on by hand (which is what I'm doing until I get the press) than the BFK version. 

Zucchini

Back to printmaking- Here's a woodcut done for a food alphabet exchange: it's 6" x 8", water-based inks on Rives lightweight paper. For the background, I transferred my drawing onto an uncut block, then applied plain water to the areas I wanted lighter. I rolled it with light green ink, then added a bit of yellow ink to the flower. After printing about 30 of the background, I printed the "key block" in dark green on top. I tried to make it not-too-obvious, so that you'd have to look an extra second to see the little zucchini. This was a fun exchange!

Calling Glooscap

Here's another almost-illustration print, done for an exchange. The theme was "Mythology," so I chose a Native American story about Glooscap (creator-being) giving the loons their voice. It's titled "Calling Glooscap" and is a woodcut, 4" x 6" oil-based inks on Rives lightweight. It started out as a black and white image, but I added the blue sky, then it looked funny without color in the water, so I cut another block.

Fairy Tale

Recently, I completed a print for an exchange, the subject of which was to be a fairy tale. I picked "The Boy Who Drew Cats," that I'll post below. The print is a woodcut, 8" x 10", printed on Rives lightweight paper. The other pic is my printing setup- you can just make out a squidge of the brown-black ink on the right.
THE BOY WHO DREW CATS a Japanese fairy tale
A farmer and his wife had many children. Their youngest son was small and weak, so they took him to the temple to become a priest. He learned quickly, but drew cats everywhere. The old priest finally said he could not be a priest, though he might be an artist, and sent him away with the advice to avoid large places at night, and keep to small ones. He decided to go to a big temple nearby and ask them to take him on.
The temple was deserted because a goblin had driven the priests away. Warriors who fought against the goblin were never seen again. A light burned at the temple at night, so when the boy arrived, he went in. He saw some big white screens and painted cats on them. Then he went to sleep, but, since the temple was large, he remembered the old priest's advice and found a little cabinet to sleep in. During the night, he heard sounds of fighting. In the morning, the goblin-rat was dead in the middle of the temple, and all the cats he had painted had mouths wet and red from the blood.

"Fried Chicken"

This is one version of my slightly sick pollution joke for the New Year. Though it's a two-block woodcut, I'm calling it a monoprint because I've printed it in several different colors and on different papers, including one on an icky yellowish-green color that I just delivered for the "Prints of the Year: What's New in New Hampshire Printmaking" show (reception Feb 8 in Concord). Have a happy and less-polluted new year!

Kitty Puss

Here's another critter, in the same general vein as the Patches print. This one's a bit bigger, at 6" x 8" and was also done with four colors on three woodblocks. My reference was a photo on the Wet Canvas site (thanks!).
P.S. I fixed the blog so that now anyone can leave a comment!

Let Him Lie

Well, last night was the reception for the critter show, "Great & Small; Works on Paper." Not a lot of people showed up, maybe due to the snow, but the ones that did were enthusiastic about the prints (THANK YOU!!!). This dog print is a multi-block woodcut of Patches, our ancient dog, who really does sleep a lot. He's a great model, almost like a still life.....

Emergency Print

So, late on Friday I discovered that I should have mailed a bunch of prints for an exchange several weeks ago. I got out my flower photos from last summer, did a drawing, cut a woodblock and printed more than a dozen "Magnolia"s. I mailed them out today, not knowing whether or not they'd be rejected, as I couldn't get the coordinator on the phone. One thing in my favor (but not anyone else's!) is that many others also have not yet sent their prints, according to the website. Whew! For those interested in details, the image is about 3 3/4" x 3 1/2", printed in olive green oil-based ink on Rives lightweight paper.

Tarantula

This is another woodcut that's in the print show that's now hanging. A friend took a photo of this spider in the Nevada desert and let me use it as a reference (thanks, Bruce!) The image is 6" x 8", printed on banana paper, though, strictly speaking, this isn't the kind of tarantula that Harry Belafonte would have found in his bananas. It's kinda creepy, but it was fun to do, especially the watercolor on the spider's body.

Black Cat

Here's another print that will be in the upcoming "critter" show. I did a woodcut of the country store down the road, but especially liked a part of it that included the picnic table. I cut another block of just that part, but added a cat in the shadows. This watercolor-with-woodcut stuff is really fun!
P.S. Even though this print looks bigger than the butterfly, it's only 6" x 4"; the butterfly print is 11" x 6".