Mid-Autumn Festival - Limited Edition 11of 12 Print

I first learned about the Mid-Autumn Festival at an opening of an exhibition of my work at Taylor's Contemporanea in Hot Springs, AR, where I met Lam Tse Sheung, wife of the guitarist providing the music that night, Michael Carenbauer. It was the first full moon of October, 2004, and she told me it was a famous holiday in China and Taiwan. I didn't know much more about it than that at the time, but driving home through the mountains after the opening, I was ambushed by the rising moon, and drew some studies when I got home. Later I added the homeless dude on the shoulder in a watercolor I called "Transient." Then 11 years later, something about this image inspired me to make a linocut of it. But even then I didn't know what was going on. Only recently did I learn about Hou Yi and Chang'e. This is one version of the story: Hou Yi was a hero who was given an elixer of immortality. But his wife Chang'e knew he was also a narcissistic tyrant who did not deserve to even to live, let alone live forever. So on the 15th of August (lunar calendar) she snatched the magic potion, drank it herself and flew off to the moon. Yi was really pissed. He tried to shoot Chang'e down but failed and died on the road soon afterwards, penniless and alone. Chang'e is still up there. We celebrate this today by eating mooncakes on the first full moon of Autumn.. But the viewer is the final authority on a work of art, so make up your own damn story. This is a 3-color linocut, image 10 x 7 inches, sheet 12 x 9.5 inches.It can ship unmounted or matted with white or off-white mat. Some the impressions have stuff on the back, like trial proofs from this or another print, in the interest of saving paper, so you may be getting two prints for the price of one - and a peek into the artist's working methods to boot.... 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:9.5 W x 12 H x 0.1 D in

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