March 22 – May 6: Mitchell • Giddings Fine Arts is pleased to exhibit new and select woodblock prints by Matt Brown in Conversations with Color Woodblock Prints. An Artist Opening Reception will take place Thursday, March 22 from 5-7pm. The gallery will host an Artist Talk Saturday, April 21 at 5pm, which will feature a live demonstration in printmaking by Brown.
Following the Japanese hanga method, the printmaking technique used by Hokusai and Hiroshige, each of Brown’s prints is created entirely by hand using water and pigments applied to multiple carved wooden blocks. Each woodblock corresponds to one color within a print and each is transferred to paper by a small hand-held baren.
An art major in college, Brown worked for years as a builder and cabinet maker before coming across a Hiroshige exhibit at Dartmouth College, which inspired him to research the process behind Hiroshige’s work. Brown says, “Looking back I see the idea to teach myself hanga came principally from my attraction to the method as watercolor printing. The soft quality of these colors, and the juxtaposition of these colors with the clean carved graphic edges of the shapes, is what I love best. But I also love the process of making these prints: the way an image is separated into parts and put back together, the way the translucent colors blend, the way the wood, with water, interacts with the paper.”
Brown’s exhibition will include working proofs and different states of several images, providing viewers a glimpse into the artist’s continuous dialogue with his imagery and materials. Often changes made over several years create subtle, or dramatic, re-imagining of Brown’s initial vision.
Mitchell • Giddings Fine Arts is committed to presenting innovative, contemporary works that stimulate and challenge both the seasoned collector and aesthetic explorer.
