Reductive Linoleum Prints
The print “Dog Run” is the result of a dog sitting gig I had a year ago in N.Y.C.
Three times a day I took the dog out for a walk in the neighborhood and once a day to the neighborhood “Dog Run”, a small park off Riverside Drive, for an extended play time. I would bring my sketchpad thinking that it would be a good time to sketch but the moment I arrived at the Dog Run and let my charge off his lead, I could do nothing but watch the dogs!
I was mesmerized by the flow of antics provided by a swarm of canines. I felt an intoxication watching the dogs running back and forth, up and over and through a faux boulder landscape, chasing one another, jumping on one another, chewing on each others ears, barking and rolling . A mass of dogs, a tumbling ball of dogs. It was like watching a most riveting movie and I found myself carrying their energies throughout the day and even when I lay down at night.
The drawing for “Dog Run” just came through my pencil in a drawing session in a coffee shop. As with most drawings I decide to convert into a printmaking project, I try not to edit the original content too much. Even if a character looks silly, or out of order, a drawing that is sourced from the imagination usually works despite a viewers rational mind and editing can potentially take away essential elements of a magical quality.
“Dog Run” is a reductive linoleum print made using 9 colors. The colors have been printed one at a time after carving away from a linoleum plate the previous color. The process takes several weeks if not months and an artist has an opportunity to exercise her intuitive color muscles because each successive color choice for a print cannot really be chosen until the previous color is laid down.
I really love this print . It was challenging and exciting to produce and it makes me happy to look at.
Dog Run is a 9 color reductive linoleum print. The image is 24” X 18” printed with Daniel Smith oil based inks onto a 30” X 26” sheet of Arches 88 paper. Edition: 12