patrick's artist statement

This semester in woodcut I would like to continue my themes of faith and representations of faith. In my past works with silkscreen, intaglio and lithography I’ve used images such as crosses, praying figures, star fields, universes, war, self immolation, shepherds, New Orleans, angels, daemons and saints. I’ve used these types of images to try and connect what we’ve formed religion into over time, and how its changed within such a complex, fast paced culture. For my first image I’m going to try and recreate a sketch that is in one of my pads. It is of a cascade of mountain ranges that compositionally get smaller as they reach the sky. On these mountains, as they rise, the growth of industry and civilization is represented. On the lowest hill there are smaller settlements, and on the highest mountain there are smoke stacks and the city. Woven into all these mountains, with its head in the moon is a snake skeleton. Some of the mountains, as they reach the middle and grow, will be feuding war with the little mountains and smaller civilizations. For future imagery I would like to incorporate designs of certain religious statues and daemonic gargoyles that I’ve collected as I’ve seen them. Combining different images of past religious art and present images of strife, famine, war, and moving events in the world that are in some way faith related, I hope to create different messages about the conditions of the human soul in this modern world. With silkscreen I had success introducing poetry and some text, that was faith related, and I would also like to see what combinations of imagery and text I could achieve with woodcut. With these methods I think I have multiple options for the creation of religious based messages and my personal feelings about them.
An artist that greatly affected my perception of printmaking and art was Albrecht Durer. His woodcuts are painstakingly handled with precision and a solid understanding of which carving methods achieve the desired mark. His invention of multiple scale techniques make his prints seem natural to our everyday perceptions, and thus allow us to travel deeper into the environment he created. Using many different religious images, Durer illustrated many intense scenes from some of most interesting biblical stories. The amount of talent and technique that he mastered allowed him to represent these environments and characters with realism and detail. This is hopefully something I can get a slight grasp on this semester, a sense of depth and texture that can be created through the woodcut mark.
A personal goal for myself in the techniques of woodcut is to understand the impact of white within a darker black field. I think this isn’t the best way to start the learning process for this technique, but definitely as the projects continue, and I feel more confident I would like my images to get increasingly darker. In this use of the darkness, and understanding the carving techniques, I still would like to be able to accurately represent the play of light across whatever my imagery is. I think once I get into the gargoyle images, it will be slightly easier to attempt such graphic images. Another goal I have for myself is to increase the size for one of my projects. Way beyond the necessary size limit. I think it will probably e the last project but I think this jump from a comfortable composition size, to a larger unknown area will help me learn more about my techniques. I know when I increased size of my plates in intaglio, the work load increased, but all the struggle I put into it really helped me understand more about the technique overall. I definitely would like to try this with woodcut. Other than that I am very excited to try and learn everything I can about my last printmaking technique. After this semester I will have tried every form of printmaking at U Mass, and I am very excited to push myself to learn as much as I can this semester.