Biography

Liv Rainey-Smith is an artist specializing in hand-pulled xylographic prints. Her imagery draws primarily upon historic styles, folklore, dreams, and esoteric traditions. Rainey-Smith’s woodcut process incorporates a mixture of traditional and modern tools as well as a blend of European and Japanese printmaking technique. She prints her own fine art prints in small editions on both paper and animal parchment.

Statement

As an artist working in a medium which demands patience and foresight, I enjoy the challenge of tempering impulse with process. My approach to woodcut printmaking is an ever developing system of technical control and precision with space left for chance and chaos.

This ever changing form of balance is portrayed most acutely in my Iunges series, depictions of shifting forms suggested by the patterns in the wood they are carved from. These reduction prints, carved with minimal preparatory sketching, are moments of communication and revelation, to be grouped and paired as representations of harmonious discord.