Kreg Yingst

I first became interested in the block print twenty years ago when I stumbled upon the woodcut novels of Lynd Ward and Frans Masereel – wordless books that transcend language with one image per page, sans text, presented in stark black and white. The strong contrasting graphic aesthetic appealed to me for various reasons and it was at this time that I began to dabble with the medium along with painting. There is a slow, meditative process to printmaking that appeals to my temperament. The ideas and images are typically conceived and fully worked out in my mind before making their way to the uncarved blocks. And although I draw inspiration from different sources, my recent ideas stem from music, lyric and poetry. Unlike Ward and Masereel, I often combine text and imagery, using letters and words for both their visual shape and meaning. My process is simply to sketch out my ideas, transfer them backwards to the block, carve away the negative space, ink the surface, and then after choosing a paper, hand-pull both through my antique Showcard sign press. The various colors are applied through multiple carved blocks, or via a “reduction block” method where the same block is carved and printed multiple times, or through “hand tinting” with transparent watercolor pigments over oil-based inks.