Lisa Brawn - Honey, Why Are You So Sweet?

Lisa is an artist from Calgary, Alberta, who makes woodcuts using salvaged hundred year old Douglas fir.

Artist Statement:

I have been making woodcuts for over 20 years since I saw the woodcuts from the printmaking department at art college. I was in the drawing department and am self-taught at woodcut. I don't make prints, but prefer to paint the woodcut blocks themselves. I started out  working with salvaged plywood, then moved on to pine, then I lucked into about 15 truckloads of salvaged hundred year old Douglas fir beams from the restoration of a heritage building. I also work with cherry wood and sometimes walnut. Primarily my woodcuts are Pop art portraits but I am also interested in the graphic interpretation of wildlife and especially wild birds.

The salvaged Douglas fir is interesting to work with because the wood has so many knots and nail holes and so on, whereas cherry wood for example, is a flawless blank.

Every week I work 50-60 hours in the studio and produce three new woodcuts. The success of a piece is dependent on the descriptive flow of lines and there is no room for the slightest error. I am interested in expressing appearance, character, warmth and feeling with the greatest economy of line.

Usually I work in series that are inspired by travel. A trip to Coney Island resulted in a series of sideshow portraits and a trip to New Orleans inspired my recent series of portraits of iconic musicians. I collect photographic references that I think will translate beautifully into woodcut and there are so many of them I never use the same reference twice. The finished woodcut blocks are three times removed from the photographic reference in that I first sketch the image, then I carve the drawing, then paint the carving.

I can't find the limits of my interest in portrait genre and woodcut medium and hope to continue exploring these for a hundred years.