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50 Years of print-making with Don Gorvett

Don Gorvett has been making color prints from wood carvings for 50 years. He still has some of the first ones he ever made in his Portsmouth, New Hampshire gallery.

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Fifty years is a long time to do anything, let alone a career. That's how long Don Gorvett has dedicated his life to art. 

Gorvett starts by finding the perfect setting and then sketching it onto paper. Those sketches are then carved into wood. 

No power tools required. Just the force of a hand to carve out the shapes. 

In Gorvett's opinion, an artist should be involved in every process of their work, starting with the vision.

"The idea of drawing from life is that things are changing immediately moment by moment by moment," said Gorvett. "The light is changing, you're changing, you're putting things down. Everything is in a constant state of invention, of flux."

The wood carving is step two, and next begins the process of putting the wood carving onto Japanese paper. One color after another the image comes to life, using a 300 pound roller to push the ink into the color prints. 

"The end result is an image that you can recognize, but the people like them. If they do like them, it's because they are going on the journey I went on when they're looking at them," said Gorvett.

He never puts too much thought into what the end result of his prints will be. To him, it's all about the experience of getting there. Perhaps that's why his finished prints are as beautiful as they are hung on the walls of Piscataqua Fine Arts on Market Street in Portsmouth. 

"More experienced, and I have more of an intellectual awareness of what's happening," said Gorvett about his long career. "Where as when I was very young, it was in large part very instinctual."

Visit Gorvett's website and see some of his prints here

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