I love the craft of making woodblock prints, also know as woodcuts. My woodcuts start with ink drawings made in the field which are later transfered to the wood, then carved, and printed in my studio. I print with a limited palette of black and blue-gray ink. My technique of printing a semi-transparent light blue-gray over black yields a new third color, a dark gray.

Making a woodcut is a craft-oriented process. It’s reductive instead of additive. The woodcut printmaker starts with a black block and carves away the wood to reveal the image.  The image is cut in reverse, the mirror image of the final print. I hand print with a simple press using oil-based ink on washi paper of 25 to 50 prints in an edition. This all sounds tedious, but it’s also really fun, a quality I hope comes through in the prints.

                                                  —Curt | December 2023