Self Portrait

Charles Edward Gill

An expressive, self assured self portrait by Charles Gill, done as a reduction woodcut in 1953 when he was 20 years old. Upon being reminded of the existence of this work Gill wrote:

"I must have been in George O'Connell's printmaking class at CCAC, in which we did at least one of each process: relief, intaglio, and planographic. What surprises me in seeing this is that it is a reduction woodcut. That is when the whites have been cut, the block is printed in a light color. (In this case, not a gray ink, but an under-inked black.) After further cutting, the next darker color: full black in this case. I had no idea I knew how to do a reduction block in 1953! It's awfully well registered - it must have earned an 'A'."

Gill used an irregularly shaped plank to carve into as a matrix, the image is wider at the top than the bottom, not a major consideration for a 20 year old in 1953.