Philip Harper

The main subjects of my linoprints are portraits drawn from life, in person or online, and to a time limit. I aim for a style that is immediate and expressive. It is more important to me to communicate the emotions and spirit of the sitter than to achieve a naturalistic likeness. The strong graphic qualities of linoprint make it the perfect expressionist medium.

Sometimes, I draw directly onto the block while the subject is still sitting. In the submitted piece I made a charcoal drawing in under five minutes,  transferred this onto the block by  pressure, went over this in India ink to prevent smudging, and then cut the block. However I do it, the aim is to have as
few processes between drawing and printing as possible, so that something of the life of the sitter is preserved. Accordingly, in each stage of the process, I aim to make marks that are dynamic. I try to achieve this by ensuring that very few marks are left hanging by themselves: most connect to another, forming a living whole. The image in my work is usually made of black marks, most often lines. The aim is to translate the drawn pen or charcoal mark into the linocut medium, again with immediacy in mind. For this reason the hand-drawn and hand-cut element of my work is important in my linocuts.