A new portfolio of oversized woodcut prints by Richard Deon

Lincoln’s Campaign to Defeat the Hudson River School

Lincoln’s Campaign Broadsheet, 2023, Woodcut on paper. Sheet: 52 x 39 1/8 in.

My creative process

Of interest to me is the junction of fiction and historical revisionism. My work explores how re-illustration can reveal (or distort) past and present dystopias. The woodcut portfolio “Lincoln’s Campaign to Defeat the Hudson River School” is a 5-year project that revisits 19th-century storytelling and printing techniques. The subject matter is a surreal assembly of fixed images. The narrative is revealed with short captions, including one of Lincoln’s most repeated campaign quotes. Lincoln’s bodyless face pursues two unattainable goals: to defeat the unseen Hudson River School and relocate a mysterious monument to a meaningful site by land and sea. This Homeric episode may illustrate determination amongst severe weather or something existential, like the transmutation of legacy. The back-and-forth paradox allows the viewer to daydream and linger.

Lincoln’s Campaign: Monument Shipment, 2023. Woodcut on paper. Sheet: 52 x 39 1/8 in.

What inspirations influenced this project?

The “Lincoln’s Campaign” project is an interpolated, dreamlike expression based on two study bullets:

• Lincoln’s legacy is based on his noteworthy achievements. His death left a void in American leadership.

• Hudson River School motifs reflect three themes of America in the 1800s: discovery, exploration, and settlement.

A few books about expeditions have made a lasting impression. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, illustrated by Rockwell Kent, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, illustrated by Gustave Doré. The Rings of Saturn by WG Sebald embraced history through a meandering journey. As a teenager, I read every book by Richard Brautigan, whose prose led me to believe anything written on paper could be worthy of reflection. These publications are masterful expressions of storytelling and illustration.

Lincoln’s Pursuit: Blown Off Course, 2023. Woodcut on paper. Sheet: 51 3/4 x 39 in.

What are the methods and techniques in this body of work?

I start a woodblock print by composing the illustration digitally. An inexpensive blueprint is made for review and manual manipulation. The blueprint is then transferred in reverse to cherry veneer plywood. Black areas are drawn with a Sharpie marker. A thin red transparent glaze is applied to the block. Japanese carving gouges are used to remove the red areas to reveal white areas. Wire brushes may be used to create gray tones. After simplifying shapes, a reversed wax rubbing on paper is made. The Civil War era letterforms for the captions were cut by laser machine and re-glued onto a base woodblock.

Monument Rises Above Thomas Cole Mountain, 2023. Woodcut on paper. Sheet: 40 1/2 x 52 7/8 in.

Production notes

Lyell Castonguay of BIG INK, LLC inked and printed the combined blocks in April and June 2023. This short video on Instagram shows the inking and printing of the above print. The Digital Fabrication Lab in the Art Department of SUNY New Paltz assisted in laser cutting outlines and typographic characters for Lincoln’s Campaign Broadsheet and caption blocks.

Monument Relocated to Lincoln, New Hampshire, 2023. Woodcut on paper. Sheet: 40 1/4 x 50 3/4 in.

…I Am Bound to Live by the Light I Have, 2023. Woodcut on paper. Sheet: 28 5/8 x 84 7/8 in.

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Revising the Past

I'm unsure about the standard for revising art that has been shown before. The sacred black-and-white flag at the end of a race has always bothered me. I get that once art is hung, it's considered finished, but then I think about the cave paintings in Lascaux, where different people added animal drawings over many years. Something special can come from allowing time to pass.

While I was wrapping paintings and building crates for an exhibition at the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art in Sedalia, MO., I wanted to complete a painting that distilled the exhibition statement into a few words. The Paradox and Conformity title was OK, but it didn’t capture the repetitive reuse of familiar motifs from one painting to another.

Just after the exhibition was loaded on the truck, a “word of the day” email revealed “stare decisis” as the Latin phrase for "to stand by things decided." In short, it is the doctrine of precedent. Well, there you go. New art activity sourced from past art activity is solid logic and how civilization thinks.

This Island, 2009, acrylic on canvas with rods and finials, 68 x 114 inches

It was too late to finish the painting or change the artist's statement of the Daum exhibition. I installed “This Island” in a concurrent Paradox and Conformity exhibition at the Earlville Opera House. Maybe the painting did not need the Stare Decisis lettering?

Handling and storing “This Island” was frustrating; it was always in the way or forgotten, rolled up, out of sight. With found isolation time of the COVID-19 pandemic I completed my original idea. During December of 2020, I completed and retitled the piece “Stare Decisis”. After 11 years, I rest my case.

Stare Decisis, 2020, acrylic on canvas with rods and finials, 68 x 114 inches