Petites Histoires

In responding to the idea and visual prompt of “Hot Type,” I returned to a long-held source of inspiration for me, art books. Specifically, a little cache of small, paperback books given to me by my aunt when I first went off to art school over 30 years ago. Printed in the fifties and sixties in France, these little books, that I have carried from studio to studio, often provided my first introduction to certain artists and art movements. Japanese art, the Impressionists, Monet, Miro, van Gogh and many others, sometimes discovered for the first time in these books, continue to serve as distant teachers in my painting and printed work. Yellowed and now falling apart, the pages have found their way into this series of print collages.

I come to printmaking less interested in making editions, a series of the same print made the same way each time, than exploring possibilities. I often work in monoprint, where changes to the color, orientation and combination of plates, results in a wholly unique image. This has led me to use chine collé, a form of collage making in print, to take those explorations even further. In this series, titled Petites Histoires, I chose woodcut as my primary medium. Woodcut seems to bring out in me a need to work in graphic, semi-abstract natural forms, remembered and invented from direct drawing observations in the landscape. Leaves, grasses, trees, branches and nests can be discovered in the work based on sketches from walks in the landscape. I’m influenced greatly by the Japanese printmaker, Naoko Matsubara (who taught at the University of Rhode Island for a time), and have tucked away little homages to her work in some of the star-shaped leaves, found in her prints from Kyoto.

These prints are both a nod to the history of art and to making prints in the present moment.

MICHAEL RICH