Description

A full-time resident of Lincolnville, Maine, for more than twenty-five years, Welliver has made the rugged coastal landscape his subject. His art follows in the American landscape tradition which artists like Albert Pinkham Ryder and Winslow Homer developed in the late 19th century and Marsden Hartley and John Marin continued in the early 20th century. In his images of quiet, dense woods and glistening streams, Welliver communicates nature's closeness and singularity. He often contemplates a single element in the landscape. Here, a stump, engulfed by ferns and mosses with glimpses of saplings in the background, indicates the artist's concern with nature in its various stages of birth and decay. Welliver's woodcuts follow in the tradition of Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints. They are printed using water-based inks, which give the layers of color a delicate, translucent quality. Trained in Japanese woodcut print methods, Shigemitsu Tsukaguchi assists Welliver in his production of color woodcuts. This technique requires a separate block for each color; Stump needed twenty-seven intricately cut blocks.