Often, at some point while I’m working on a series I will start to feel a little stifled, perhaps I have fallen into a routine and the work doesn’t feel as inspired or as truthful as it did in the beginning, or I may start to feel confined by my own self-imposed “rules”. When this happens I know it is time for a “creative” break.

For me this means stepping away from my current work and creating something different, either by using different methods and materials, or different subject matter, or different rules, or no rules, or just to play and have fun, explore something new. This is a process that changes over time. Work I’ve done in the past includes realistic landscapes, seascapes, ink drawing, abstract painting, collage, and in most recent years linocut reduction printing.

I first learned to carve as a child, because my father was into woodworking, and I still have a few relief carvings I made back then. My first block print was made in elementary school, and it left an impression on me that I never forgot. It feels natural now to turn to carving and printing, even though I am a novice and am pretty terrible at it! Carving is a slow process and I’m an impatient person. Even slower is the process of inking and pulling prints by hand. I love the physicality of the process and it is so very different than the other creative work I do.

If you are unfamiliar with linocut printing, it is similar to wood block printing using a block of linoleum made for carving. You carve a design in the block, roll ink on it using a brayer, and place paper over it rubbing/ burnishing (or using a press) to pull the ink from the block onto the paper. In regular block printing you would use a new block for each color, but in reduction printing it is all made from the same block. Each layer you carve away what you want to preserve from the color below. In the end nothing is left of the block and it is discarded. Reduction printing is always limited in number, as you can never re-print anything. It is simultaneously a creative and destructive process.

I’ve been using easy-cut linoleum, which is soft, flexible and carve-able on both sides, so I can get two reduction prints from one block if I’m conservative. I’m using water based inks, which are notoriously difficult to work with, because I’m impatient and they dry fast and clean up easy with water. I’m pulling these by hand using a wooden spatula, a rolling pin, and my hands. At the moment the only space I have to work out of is my bedroom, so there is also the issue of hanging them all to dry. Below are some process photos, and some finished prints that have come out of “creative” breaks.

Staying true to my method of working intuitively, nothing was pre-drawn or planned, I simply started carving on the block and kept going. Visualizing colors in reduction printing is like thinking backwards! I love surprises, and I gravitate towards ways of creating that allow for continual surprises. I never know what’s going to happen, and no clue how things will turn out, and that is endlessly fascinating to me.

I understand why so many people give up on reduction printing. I really love it though, so I don’t believe I will give it up, even if I never excel at it. At any rate I feel like I’ve “cleansed my palette” and am ready to return to the series I have in progress, refreshed and excited again.