Leslie Moore
Linocuts
About
I am a mostly self-taught artist, although I spent a summer during college in Perugia, Italy, studying print-making and figure drawing at the Accademie di Belle Arti Pietro Vannucci. Since then, I’ve taken workshops in drawing and printmaking at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine, and Zea Mays Printmaking in Florence, Massachusetts.
In 2008, I was introduced to relief print making by Siri Beckman at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. It was a one-day workshop and we each carved and printed a linoleum block. I was hooked! Making a relief print is just the opposite of making a pen-and-ink drawing. In print making, I carve out what I don’t want in the final image; in drawing, I ink in what I do want. I love the mental gymnastics this reversal of mark-making sets off in my brain.
Making relief prints forces me out of the obsessive-compulsive realm of my pen-and-ink drawing. Carving and printing a block—either wood or linoleum—is less precise, not so painstaking. I make mistakes! Not only do I learn to live with my mistakes, but sometimes I learn to love them!
