Matt Brown

I graduated from college hoping to work with my hands. In 1987 I established my own business doing work with wood: post and beam barns, new house construction, renovations, additions. Cabinetry work led to the construction of a shop which is where I now make my woodblock prints. My printmaking career owes much to those years. Learning to work with wood, to line things up and judge by eye, to draw up plans and implement them into 3 dimensions: this was in many ways my printmaking apprenticeship. My materials are now pigments, wooden blocks and paper and my pursuit is with line, shape, and color, but it still feels like the same process of visualizing something, analyzing it into parts and then putting hand to tool and getting down to work making things. My technique is inspired by the example of the ukiyo-e and shin hanga prints of Japan. I love the process of making these prints: the way pictorial simplicity is encouraged, the way an image is separated into parts and put back together, the way the translucent colors blend and juxtapose, the way the wood interacts with the paper.

My imagery is mostly from around New England: Vermont, New Hampshire, and the coast of Maine. My printmaking work is motivated by a desire to wwwelop better visual understanding. I am fascinated by how art can change the way we see our world.