I began making woodblock prints in 1977 and for about three years my work consisted almost exclusively of woodblocks. My early models were the German expressionists and 20th century Japanese printmakers, particularly Munakata. In prints influenced by Japanese techniques, I used sumi ink, watercolors, and rice paste, and have noted this in my descriptions of the prints. While I used color at this time, my prints are predominantly black and white.
Around 1982, I stopped making woodcuts. Then, in 1988/89 I began introducing them into my photo-based work. In 1992 I was one of 8 Canadian artists represented in “X Mostra da Gravura Cidade de Curitiba\Mostra Americana”, at the Museu da Gravura, Curitiba, Brazil, a curated international print exhibition focussing on alternate forms of printmaking. The prints in these works generally expressed various ways in which the black and white woodblock could reflect photographic elements.
In 1994/1995 I made several prints in which I tried to find a graphic language for representing digitized images. In 1998 I made a series of woodblocks based on digitized images from Edweard Muybridge, which grew out of my web site Animal Locomotion, for which Muybridge was the starting point. I continued to explore ways of representing the zoomed digitized image. These woodcuts have twice won awards at the Boston Printmakers' North American Print Biennial–in 1995 and 2001. Subsequently, I exhibited at the International Print Center New York and the 2003 Print Biennial of The Print Club, Philadelphia, while continuing to show my wooducts in exhibitions which were not exclusively devoted to printmaking. Please see my CV for more details.