The Culvert Print - Limited Edition of 10

3-color linocut, image 7 x 10 inches, sheet 10 x 12 inches I heard from my friend the printmaker Evan Lindquist that his son Carl hsd fallen ill in India, where he teaches at a university in Bangalore, now in a hospital bed with steroid IVs dripping into his veins - and writing poetry! So I go to his Facebook page and the first thing I see is this poem: A WINDING ARC TOWARD NOON Down by the river I kill the Buddha. Shoot him dead. He laughs, chuckles bubbling and sinking beneath the current. These days I expect nothing. Not even sunrises. But during some mornings the red wound of dawn reminds me of that gentle bullet as it winds its way toward noon. (Carl Lindquist, 2018) I had been in a slump, inspired by nothing, but this poem knocked me out. I had been there, down by that river, and whenever I got desperate enough I would paint an image of that despair, and that would kick me out of it. I felt like this was what Carl was trying to do, at the same time seeing the joke on himself. Buddha said to be born was suffering, living was suffering, dying was suffering. Shoot the son of a bitch. But he just laughs in your face. Ha. I was strangely inspired by that poem and wanted to paint it but couldn't come up with an image - and then I realized that I had already painted it! "The Culvert," 2007. (See additional images, and also here in my paintings collection.) I had the river, the unexpected sunrise, the red wound of dawn, the gun, the bullet and the arc toward noon. True, instead of the Buddha I had the crow, but the crow is Death, and you can no more kill Death than you can kill the Buddha, so to me the painting and the poem had the same meaning. I hadn't made a print of that image, so I decided to try it now. This is the result. 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 mostly 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:10

Size:12 W x 10 H x 0.1 D in

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