Brad Teare, Afternoon Walk, Woodcut, 9" x 10"

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brad Teare has been carving woodcuts for over twenty years.   Six years ago he began painting en plein air and fused his love of woodcuts with his love of the landscape.   He spent the eighties and early nineties illustrating for publishers such as The New York Times and Random House, where he did book covers for authors such as James Michener and Ann Tyler. He grew up in Kansas revering artists such as Rockwell Kent and Lynn Ward and worked summers at a small letterpress print shop.   After High School he traveled to Northern Idaho and built a log cabin in the foothills of Moscow Mountain where he spent a year painting in watercolor.   It was tough painting through the winter when the days were short and all he had was a kerosene lamp but he stuck with it and slowly began to learn the fundamentals.   That summer he worked in the Cascade Mountains building trails.   It was there amid the beauty of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area that he knew that someday he would devote himself to landscape.   He then left for two years to Argentina where he continued to fill his sketchbook with drawings of gauchos, Patagonia, and Italianate architecture. On his return from Argentina he enrolled at the University of Idaho.

Brad Teare, River Soliloquy, Woodcut, 9" x 11"

Like a lot of schools in the late seventies and early eighties, they were obsessed with abstract expressionism.   It was a difficult time for realists.   His professors openly scoffed at pursuing a realist tradition.   One professor facetiously said during a critique, "if you're going to draw that way you might as well be an illustrator."   After the initial sting wore off, Teare decided it wasn't a bad idea.   He transferred to Utah State University and studied illustration for three years. After finishing his studies, he and his wife packed up their belongings and headed for New York City.   During his first day in the city he made the rounds to a variety of publishers.   Weary from so much walking (he was too frugal to take the subway) and finding himself in Times Square he decided to see if the New York Times needed any illustrations.   He could at least get out of the heat and rest for a while.   Within a few minutes he was talking to an art director and was given his first assignment, a story about the Galapagos Islands.   He was one of the pioneer illustrators of that era who built a successful career on the age-old technique of woodcut printing. In 1993 his dream of painting and drawing the Western landscape reasserted itself and he moved to Providence, Utah, a small town in the Rocky Mountains where he maintains his printing studio.

The Technique of Woodcut Printing by Brad Teare

Multi-color woodcuts are uncommon because they are extremely difficult to do. They require the patience of Job and the logistical ability of Alexander the Great (or so it can seem). To make the ten woodcuts of scenes near Maynard Dixon's studio I carved Eighty-three wood blocks. I then inked these blocks with different colors and printed each color of the series by hand for a total of 2490 impressions (not including artist's proofs which are experimental impressions taken to evaluate color and registration).

Brad Teare, Rustic Sentinels, Woodcut, 9.5" x 9"

For each impression I mixed the exact color of ink (which often takes hours), applied the ink to the block with a roller, registered the paper to the block, and hand cranked the block through an antique Challenge proof press. With the woodcut "Long Valley Morning" I passed each woodcut through the press eleven times which means that the thirty sheets of that series passed through the press 330 times.

But before I can print I have to carve the blocks. I start by drawing a linear drawing, from a plein air sketch, directly onto a block of cherry or bass wood. If the scene has a cloudy sky, for example, I make this drawing define every outline of every cloud. I then carve away the wood that has no lines on it. I then ink this block with black ink and print it onto a piece of vellum (which won't absorb the ink). I then place a new, uncut block into my press, register the vellum and run it through the press. This presses the wet ink outline onto each block. In the clouds I may want to fill each shape with a light blue grey. So on the light blue grey block I carve away everything except where I want that color to appear. I then go back to the original black block and carve away the outline of the clouds. This technique is called "lost key printing" because the original linear woodcut (or key) is carved away. Some of the key block is usually retained as the deepest notes of the print (but rarely black and few if any linear details). This laborious process was used by woodcut artists such as Gustave Baumann. It creates a less linear and more painterly looking woodcut. It takes a lot of fine tuning between the various blocks to get them to all work in harmony together and every block that is added makes it exponentially more difficult. When the ink is dry I hand emboss and hand deckle each print.

Brad Teare, Morning Solitude, Woodcut, 9" x 10"

I prefer to call the art created by this method "woodcuts" rather that "prints" because the process has nothing to do with modern photographic or computer printing. Each woodcut is hand made and unique. I carefully deliberate over each color of every impression. I carefully adjust each impression to give maximum aesthetic value. Slight variations are made into strengths by adjusting the following impression which give the woodcut texture and vibrancy. Only the very best are selected for the final editions.

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