Taking a closer look at two master wood engravers

 

The Splinter Group had an outing on Friday, to see the exhibition of wood engravings by Eric Ravilious at Aberdeen Art Gallery.   We also were shown their collection of work by Claire Leighton, another consummate wood engraver who worked in the 1930s. 

Ravilious’ work was typical Ravilious, decorative, full of mark making, playful.  There was a strong sense of him testing out his tools to see what marks they could make, and the way he played with perspective gave his work a naïve feeling which I guess is reflected in the work of many designers and illustrators today.  Leighton on the other hand was more about the subject.  The Gallery’s collection was mostly from a series she did based on workmen in the US.  To me, the most successful were of men in snow, shovelling in the streets of New York or a wagon hauling through the backwoods.  The snow helped lighten the blacks, which dominated her images. Her work was all about outline and shape, beautifully athletic men and machinery in rugged landscapes.  Tone was minimal and just a few strokes of her spitsticker were all she used to relieve the black.  There’s a hint of that socialist worker stuff that was fashionable then in art but certainly not now.  Unlike Ravilious, whose decorative, not-quite-but-almost quaint, certainly charming, Englishness is still popular. Robert MacFarlane devotes a chapter to him in The Old Ways, so he must be in.

Not all Claire Leighton’s work was so dark, she wrote and illustrated a lovely book about her garden, Four Hedges, which was reissued in 1970 so not outrageously expensive on Abebooks.

Plenty of inspiration for the next Splinter project…..

A full calendar

Fortingall Art finished yesterday, and I took my first opportunity to see it, having decided on a last minute holiday before it was all printed and hung. Unfortunately for my viewing experience but not for our sales, the whole calendar print with all twelve blocks had been sold and picked up.  This was great news for the Splinter Group and I did get to see, and photograph, an unframed print.  It's an impressive piece of work, rich in detail and some well considered design, well done us.  We're moving on with our wood engraving and it shows how the technique brings its own character to our diverse styles of mark making.  We're planning a trip to Aberdeen Art Gallery for our next meeting to take a look at their wood engraving collection and to see the Ravilious exhibition there. They also have lots of Clare Leighton, who did many richly textured engravings for her own books on the living world, so it should be an inspiring visit.