Matisse famously declared that "After making a line on the paper, the artist makes another line. This second line will either add or subtract . . ." The woodcut artist subtracts always, drawing incised slices of light from the block, their light only fully visible after the ink impression is taken. Some artists, li… Read more

Matisse famously declared that "After making a line on the paper, the artist makes another line. This second line will either add or subtract . . ." The woodcut artist subtracts always, drawing incised slices of light from the block, their light only fully visible after the ink impression is taken. Some artists, like Kirchner, Nolde , Leonard Baskin and Barry Moser, seem to possess an instinct about where that next removal of wood should occur, and just how much ought to be removed. Barry Farmer has a similar gift. When he slides the slivers and chips of wood free from his blocks to incise limbs, dirt and stones from his woodcuts of forests, thickets and hillsides, he makes the most of "simple" black and white-- which every mature artist knows is impossible to fake, cover up or otherwise transform into the subterfuges of paint. Barry Farmer's woodcuts are strong, yet mysterious, ambiguous in a purposeful way which relies on his skill as a composer of pictures. His paintings and drawings have a similar strength; it consists of an ability to translate the welter of visual sensation into the essential. While all of his work is interesting, and I find myself learning from his site each time I visit, I particularly look forward to his prints, which are, in the way he carves them, his lyric poetry: enough "song" in black and white alone is there to draw out melodies from the block. N.C. Mallory