“Crowned Hill” – woodcut – RAYMOND VERDAGUER ART

Working large size woodcut

crowned hill – woodcut

Large size ‘Woodcut‘ is an approach of cutting involving as much the body than the mind, and it may not be possible to create it in one day alone. Also, printing becomes more challenging when the wooden carved panel is longer than the bed of your press! The choice of the printing paper maybe different .

Overall it remains a “defiance ” to the common [of what is refair as] woodcut technique. I did not choice working large size woodcut for this reasons, their would be the ‘wrong’ ones. To my opinion, I’m just concern about what a smaller woodcut versa a larger one, expresses and impacts us differently visually.

Having being ‘landscape’ painting for months now I had to confront with the dilemma of how to give the feeling of immense space[s] into a small portable support. When I first started my season I had naively planned to have a format that would be close to what is usualy called ‘panoramic’. But to my suprise, very soon I had to realize, that it was not the ‘horizontal’ shape that was translating the sense of space but rather the ‘vertical ‘ one. The taller your support , the more challenging to compose, but the more likely to re-create a lanscape that does not look like the one I study [ in the traditional sense of what a ‘landscape picture’ is in people’s minds…] but that ‘feels’ closer to the sentiment of space!

In recent years I have mainly used linoleum to created my cuts, this time something felt odd using this material to express this particular ‘atmosphere’, the endless blending of water, rock and air, event so it could be argue that wood because of it’s fibrous nature remains ‘stiff’ against the cutting blade, and not so ‘controllable’, as one as to work with it like any men of the sea is constally challenge by the will of ‘nature’, not so predictable and so agreeable…

In any event the final true image revels itself during printing time, there is time for an always surprise because the grain of the wood plays its final role, and the blacks, [not to the agreement of all], in a more settle manner, lay themselves with breathability. This does not agree with any computer-device screen, only paper is able to give justice to the work.