My excitement and interest in creating landscape images from woodcut started in December 2008. I was working on my final project for the semester, a small woodcut (15.5" x 14") of Yesnaby, my favorite location in Scotland; which I had visited that summer. My inspiration came from looking at a woodcut by Gorden Mortensen in the fine print collection at the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, North Dakota. I found his mark making and use of color exceptional and it prompted me to attempt one of my own woodcuts. I highly recommend taking a look at his work. http://www.gordonmortensen.com/ I still reference him quite often throughout my woodcutting process. I enjoyed working with the wood and picking out the shapes and patterns I saw in the landscape. Creating my own color pallet and how it worked with the wood was also something that drew out the painterly side of me. Piecing everything together turned out to be a challenge that pushed me as an artist. I had only worked with wood a couple times and almost all my earlier work had been figurative/ narrative; so working with a landscape felt like a different way of thinking for me. I went about it another way and in doing so I felt far less restricted. I always had this pressure of creating a perfect likeness of whatever I was trying to recreate in my art but working with wood forced me to loosen up. Wood does not always do exactly what you ask of it so I had to learn to compromise and problem solve when the would would chip off in places that where not meant to be removed. So all in all, I felt woodcut really helped me as an artist and I am enjoying my continued exploration with the medium.
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