Upland Press
About
Hi, my name is Toby Travis and I'm a linocut printmaker based in Cumbria, England. My prints are inspired by the landscapes of northern England, the people who work in them and the plants and animals which inhabit them.
Portraits of a human landscape
Although often wild and sparsely inhabited, the uplands of northern England are man-made, cultural landscapes. I am interested in how people interact with nature to form this landscape, both in the past and present. The stone-built barns and walls which frame and punctuate the landscape are relics of past human labour. The coppiced woodland and few remaining wildflower meadows are rich natural habitats which depend on continued human interaction for their existence.
Whether images of people or landscapes, all my prints are intended as portraits, an attempt to capture something personal and distinctive about the subject. The challenge of working in the medium of small-scale, primarily black-and-white, linocuts is to capture this distinct, individual character within a highly simplified form, working with a very limited palette of marks and shapes.
Keep it simple
One of the things I like about linocut printmaking is how accessible and simple it is. Some nice, fresh art linoleum and a set of sharp tools is all that's needed to make a block. For printing, a sheet of smooth printmaking paper, a wooden spoon, a tube of ink and a roller - plus elbow grease - is all that's required. It is essentially a popular, democratic art form - affordable to produce and to buy.
Solving a puzzle
For me, making a linocut print is like solving a puzzle. This is particularly true for small-scale black and white images. The subject, whether landscape or portrait, needs reducing to a bare minimum of lines and shapes. Light, dark and shade are suggested using a range of simple white shapes cut into a dark background.
