Carl Homstad August 2023

Carl Homstad’s appealing color woodcuts show skillful handling of an ancient and difficult medium. Several woodblocks, often a different block for each color, are overprinted to produce one cohesive image. But it is Carl’s own words that give us the most enlightening description of his work.

“Art gives us an understanding of place. One of the things an artist does is show us the way each place is beautiful, or awesome, or terrible. I have lived in the same place for nearly twenty years, where I have built my own studio and house. Like the One Hundred Views of Mt. Fuji, doing pictures of the same area again and again in the different seasons and times of the day is a way to gain a deeper understanding of a place. Just as it takes a long time to understand the subtleties of an area, I like to make pictures that “grow on you”. Although realistic, my work is not photographic. Naturalistic is perhaps a better description.

With my woodcuts I am constantly trying new techniques as well as working on the old ones. I try to get the most out of each cut, each color and each block. In this age of the reproduction I believe in carrying on the tradition of the color woodcut, and I enjoy the challenge. I work mostly from memory, creating images of ordinary places at extraordinary times, for example, in the rain or snow in the last rays of the sun.”

Past Exhibitions

March 2019
Harold Altman:A Retrospective

February 2019
John Wilde (1919-2006)

November 2018
Affordable Splendour-The Art of Gift Giving Holidays 2018

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