Master of Woodcuts

At his studio in Gloucester, Mass., Gorvett carves into a wooden block, cutting away the design in between layers of color.

Framed reduction woodcut prints portraying moonlit harbors, docked boats and historical New England port towns decorate the walls of the Don Gorvett Gallery, located along the Piscataqua River in Portsmouth.

A lifelong artist, Gorvett specializes in reduction woodcut printing, which involves carving an indelible design into a wooden block, inking the block and printing the design onto paper. During the printing process, the raised areas on the block carry the ink that will register on the print. Gorvett uses a single-block technique to layer the colors in the print, starting with the lightest color first. In between each color, the block is washed and the design is cut down, reducing the inked surface.

Before the cutting and printing begin, Gorvett determines the edition number of the print, or the number of prints that will be created from the single block, and the number of colors that will appear in the final print.

“I might do less color. I might add color. I might change the order of the color, depending upon what the print looks like to me in the process,” shares Gorvett. “The print talks to you and tells you what should be happening sometimes.”

Gorvett might begin the process with a shade of white. He would first ink the whole block white, print 30 white sheets, then wash the ink from the surface. Next, he would look at the design and cut every part of the block where he would want the white to remain in the print, since the carved surface area does not carry ink in the next printing stage, before moving onto the next color.

On average, Gorvett layers 8 to 11 colors in his prints. “At the very end, you print the last color, and it activates all these other ones,” he says, pointing to a framed 20-inch-by-26.25-inch print on the wall titled “The State Pier Revisited.” The print depicts the Boston waterfront in the 1960s, the red cabin of a fishing boat and the blue windows of a historic building pop, while the subtlety of the remaining colors appears in the detailed lines of the netting, the water and the pier itself.

Positioned underneath the artwork is the original woodblock Gorvett used to print the scene. “I save the blocks, and I like the blocks,” Gorvett says. “Occasionally, I’ll sell the drawing, the block and the print.”

Although Gorvett might acquire plywood from his local home improvement store, he often uses repurposed materials for his blocks, including wood from wharfs, church pews, dresser drawers and even a torn-up bathroom floor.

From beginning to end, he says, each project might take a couple of months to complete. “When I’m working on a piece and I’m motivated, I usually work daily. The thing about this technique is that you have to (work daily) in order to see it come to fruition. You can’t see it otherwise. So that’s a motivating factor.”

Born and raised in the Boston area, Gorvett spent much of his youth on the seacoast, a clear inspiration for his subject matter. “Sometimes I look for it. Sometimes it happens. It’s like theater, you know. I see the imagery as theater.” Mostly, he works from drawings of these evolving outdoor scenes.

“What’s great about woodcut,” Gorvett begins, “is that it can be treated in a very literal way. But it can also be a really great abstract medium to work in, because when I’m doing these, I’m always thinking in the abstract. It just so happens that the end result is something that you can identify — a boat or a landscape.”

While Gorvett’s work dominates the walls, drawers and folders throughout the Market Street location, the gallery exhibits works of other artists as well, such as Gorvett’s mentee, Alex de Constant, a surfer whose reduction prints capture ocean waves, the etchings of Sidney Hurwitz, Karen Whitman’s linocuts and the work of his high-school art teacher, Elinor Marvin, to whom Gorvett attributes much of his success.