Snapshot In Time: When the woodblock print HIMALAYA was being created, at the same time the Karahorum Himalaya was being compiled. This was a record to date of all expeditions through the Himalayas which had been recorded in one way or another since 1844. Woodblock artist Carol Summers has traveled to and through the Himalayas several times over the past 50 years. His travels there are the inspirations for the Art India Woodblock Series of which HIMALAYA is a cornerstone. His travels to Nepal, Tibet, China and Burma have also inspired a number of other landscapes.

Art Smart Fact: Summers produces his woodcut prints by hand, usually from one or more blocks of quarter-inch pine, using oil-based printing inks and porous mulberry papers. He makes his blocks slightly larger than the paper and before printing centers the dry sheet of paper on the cut woodblocks, securing them with clips. Summers refers to his own printing technique as “rubbing”. The ink is applied directly to the front of the sheet of paper and pressed down on to the woodblock. (In traditional Japanese woodcut prints as well as others, the ink is applied directly on to the block.)

After the ink is applied to the front of the paper, Summers sprays it with mineral spirits, which acts as a thinning agent. The absorptive fibers of the paper draw the thinned ink away from the surface diffusing and muting the colors, causing a unique glow to evolve. This is a printing process developed by Carol Summers himself though many have tried to copy it. Indeed, in fine arts academies and universities around the world today it is known and taught as the "Carol Summers Woodblock Technique" or the "Carol Summers Woodcut Printmaking Method".

About The Art: This woodcut is a picture of Mt. Everest and K-2, the highest mountains in the world. It is one of Summers' monumental woodcuts, the larger woodblock form he and a handful of others invented in the modernist 1950s and early 1960s. Another reason HIMALAYA is regarded by art historians and critics as an extraordinary work of art is that it contains excellent examples of all the basic art elements...line, shape, color and texture. You can also see how the vertical lines make us believe these mountains are very steep and how the shapes of the mountains offer a pleasing sense of symmetraical balance. The saturation of color is pure Summers while the textures of the mountainside, the tree trunks and the water, are magnified versions of those found in nature. The HIMALAYA color woodcut offered here is a PROOF.....the woodcut against which all others woodblocks in this small edition would be measured.

Note: With the purchase of any of the Carol Summers woodcuts at 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 be also be acquired separately here at Peggitys.com.