MATT BROWN

PAINTING + MIXED MEDIA

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ARTIST STATEMENT

In 1987 Brown established his own business doing work with wood: post and beam barns, new house construction, renovations, additions, lots of kitchen cabinetry. Cabinet work led to the construction of a shop which is where he now makes his woodblock prints. Brown’s print-making career owes much to his carpentry years. Learning to work with wood, to line things up and judge by eye, to draw up plans and implement them into 3 dimensions, this was in many ways his printmaking apprenticeship.

I make color woodblock prints using the Japanese hanga method. My imagery explores the development of pictorial space using the inherently flat medium of the carved and printed wood-block. By using techniques which build on intimate aspects of the Japanese approach affecting texture and tone (variations in printing pressure, fades in the brushing of the pigments) I try to achieve happy resolutions of the tension between flat printed shapes and an illusion of a depicted place.

Hanga is printing with brushes and a hand-held baren using rice paste, pigments and water from multiple hand-carved wood blocks. It is the technique used to make the ukiyo-e prints of Hokusai, Hiroshige, and others that had so much impact on Western artists, especially the Impressionists, in the latter part of the 19th century.

AVAILABLE ARTWORK

Images shown are representative of the artist. Please contact the gallery for availability.

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