Vapor Trails (der Leiermann) - Limited Edition 1 of 12 Print

It's a print! It's a pastel! It's the hurdy gurdy man! I saw this sky full of jet trails while driving home one winter afternoon in 2015. I don't think I've ever seen that many all at once, and hanging off the side of one of these vertical trails was a cloud that looked like a pole dancer. Ha! I took a shot with my phone. But it didn't really become an image for me until probably several days later when I happened to hear on SiriusXM a song that I've loved for a long time, Schubert's "Der Leiermann" from the coldly beautiful and haunting Wintereisse cycle, and suddenly the hurdy gurdy man appeared in my drawing, playing songs no one wants to hear. Even the dogs snarl at him. Watching you, old man, I see myself in you. One day I will play This hurdy gurdy too. And so I became the hurdy gurdy man, the dancer fading away in his past, in a watercolor and an oil painting. I tried to do a linocut too but failed. I couldn't force those wispy clouds out of the linoleum, so I gave it up. But about a year later, after listening to the song again - via a You Tube video of Dietrich Fischer-Diskau and Alfred Brendel, sent to me by a Facebook friend - I thought I might try it again. It gave me a new understanding of the image, the way we, our songs and paintings and lives, fade away like those vapor trails in the sky. I also thought of the Beatles' "Mr. Nowhere Man," who Doesn't have a point of view Knows not where he's going to Isn't he a bit like you and me? But this time I abandoned the purity of printmaking and when the ink dried softened the clouds with white pastel. So this is a linocut with pastel, image 7 x 10 inches, sheet 9.5 x 12 inches. I'll send it matted, white or off-white mat. The Criswell Linocut I began these experiments with linoleum back in 1999. Although these prints may resemble etchings, drypoints, lithographs or some strange hybrid, they are true relief prints, printed in two or more colors from linoleum blocks. I didn't invent this technique - Picasso and his printer Arnera did - but I've adapted it to my own purposes and, since nobody else in the world is doing it as far as I know, I'm calling it "The Criswell Linocut." The two most important things about this technique are that (1) I cut the designs with a drypoint needle and (2) that I print the dark color first and the light color second. This enables me to draw my image directly on the key block, just as I would draw with a pen on paper, rather than cut away everything BUT the image as in traditional relief printmaking. For more info about this, checkout www.warrencriswell.com/linocuts.html.

Printmaking:Linocuts on Paper

Artist Produced Limited Edition of:1

Size:10 W x 9.5 H x 0.1 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.