Snapshot In Time: "Time" was in the news a lot in 2003 when Carol Summers was inking up this woodblock print with those bright, cheery popsicle colors. The movies Out Of Time and Timeline from the book by Michael Crichton hit theaters and the new digital World Clock was the place to find the global changes in Daylight Savings Time.

Art Smart Fact: When a line encloses an area it is called a Shape and of course shapes can be drawn in different ways to show different things. Some shapes define objects but in Summers' woodblock prints shapes are usually used to convey ideas such as balance or distance. Did you notice there is not one straight line in FAR SIDE OF TIME? As in many of his woodcut prints, here Summers used curved shapes and rounded lines to convey both nearness and distance as well as rhythm and flow. The placement of the red stripe, however, created balance and a strong sense of well-being in one of the few Retro Art or Pop Art style landscapes in Summers' more recent portfolio.

About The Art: Carol Summers continues to be referred to as a modernist printmaker with a preference and talent for color-field painting. This observation was made over 50 years ago when his woodblock prints were exhibited the first time at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Coming after the abstract expressionism of the 1950s, color-field painting represented a sharp change from the earlier movement. The production of the abstract expressionists involved a strong personal emotionalism, a painterly quality and occasionally elements of cubism. Most color-field artists moved toward a more impersonal and cold aesthetic. In their works they dealt with pure, unmodulated areas of color; flat, two-dimensional spaces; monumental scale and often varied the shape of the paper itself.

Early on however, Summers broke somewhat away from the pack.....his modernist style and artwork is almost always rooted in the landscape and his extreme simplification and flat color areas are anything but hard-edged or coldly impersonal. FAR SIDE OF TIME is quintessential modernist Summers, that is, a semi-abstract landscape emotionally charged with wonder and joy at the sheer beauty of our natural world.

Note: With a purchase of any of Carol Summers woodcuts from Peggity's you receive free a four-color, 48-page Catalog Raisonne; a four color, 64-page 50-Year Retrospective Exhibition Catalog (including a color woodcut frontispiece); and the museum poster ROLLING SEA.....all personally signed by Carol Summers. Each of these items can also be acquired separately here at Peggity’s online.