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After making
woodcut prints for just under a year in 1999, I decided I needed a goal.
So, simply, here it is: I will
make 1,000 woodcut prints (Lord willin' and the creeks don't rise).
You
can view the woodcuts by scrolling down this page and click on the previous
dates to see more. This page always has the latest works. Prints are arranged
from newest to oldest, so if you keep coming back, you need only view the
top row to see the new stuff.
You are
viewing my 50 current works: 255 woodcuts are finished
Clicking
on thumbnails will open the larger version on a separate window
2008-2009
2007-2008
Two Seeds |
2006 Looks like a colorful year so far...
Floating World I |
Floating World II |
How to make a desert 1 |
Floating World III |
Floating World IV |
Few works for a commission and a few for exchanges...
Finally got cranked up again! We are now into 2005
200 down...800 to go! And I have more ready to print, no time to linger.
All the woodcuts in chronological order:
Current Works
2002-2004: 151 - 200
2001-2001: 101-150
2000-2001: 51-100
1998-2000: 1-50
You can subscribe to the Quest: 1,000 Woodcuts Updates newsletter to receive sporadic progress reports, motivational tid-bits and quotes that keep me going, and be notified when I finish the next one. Stay tuned!!!
And now...to answer the lingering question: Why 1,000 Woodcuts?
I guess I decided to make 1000 prints as a challenge. When I started reading about art and artists I admire (the heavy hitters of old...Picasso, Dali, Goya, Van Gogh, Munch, Escher, Durer...to name a very select few), the thing that struck me the most is that these guys were huge producers of work. Seem fitting to me, but also it seemed a contrast with some of my contemporaries philosophies of thinking a lot and producing a bit less. I'm a worker! I need to keep outrageously busy at all times and not think much. Yes, I produce some garbage that way but no work that I have thought and pre-planned for a long time has ever been any better than the spontaneous works I do when I brain storm, pick up a block and sketch a few stupid lines with my sharpie.
So I needed a goal, something hanging over my head to keep me honest, keep me working. Even with my love for work, I get lazy...by my standards. Yes I think I will have grown as an artist, I think artists come to a point when they need to quit pre-thinking everything, get in the studio and produce. It's a matter of self-trust...drives me crazy when I hear artists that have been doing art for years still talking about compositional elements and balancing their lights and darks??? Things like that should be left to the right brain to do as it will. Time to make art, lots of art, learn by doing, trust the sharpie and the chisel.
At times the 1000 seems to hinder, I admit it. I find myself counting...only 12 new works in 16 weeks? I better crank out a few--but then I catch myself and know that the flurries will follow the slow times and, at the very end, it will all happen in its own time.
I do love the process, I find myself wanting to draw, pull out the marvelous paper, pin it up...and turn around and grab a block of wood instead. I'm hooked on the wood, some times I think of just drawing on wood, but the chisels always follow the sketch and then the ink on the paper...and there's one more...and then another...
Anyhow, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!
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