Prints

My master's degree is in printmaking. Although my personal involvement with the medium has waned in recent years, my aesthetic roots are stained with ink. Few surfaces have more inherent beauty to me than the carved surface of a block of wood.

I made Yellow-headed Blackbird, and its companion Loggerhead Shrike, soon after I first became interested in birds. Their compositions reflect a "field guide", the Rosetta stone that humans use to translate the unfamiliar forms of the natural world. Each bird has its own map, its own voiceprint, it's own unique pattern of plumage and body shape; they are all facets of an individual "portrait".

Some of the prints are referred to as Chiaroscuro Woodcuts. The term "chiaroscuro" combines the Italian words for "light" and "dark". The artist uses several shades of a single color, or narrow range of colors, allowing light and shadow to model the form. Each color is printed from a separate block of wood. The process, first used in the sixteenth century, is one of the oldest types of color printmaking.

Apart from their brightly colored beaks, Puffins are stark black and white, making them an ideal subject for a woodcut. Unfortunately, a single still image cannot convey their liveliness and movement, so I opted to at least show three individuals in different poses.

With the vividness of living birds, comes an intensified sense of gravity and loss in images of lifeless bird carcasses. Several prints confront this duality, including Textbook Rooster, Small Bird, Great Blue Heron and Dream of Flight.