Orkney View #4

Kathryn Metz

Kathryn Metz studied printmaking with both S.W. Hayter and Robert Blackburn and went on to have a 21 year career teaching printmaking at the University of California in Santa Cruz.

"Orkney View #6" is one of a series of woodcuts Metz did in 1993, inspired by the landscape of the Scottish Islands of Orkney, a group of around 70 islands. Using hundreds of gouged horizontal lines Metz creates a modulating composition. The thickness and spacing of the gouges create the values and shapes that bring the horizontal character of the island to life.

The Orkney Islands were fashioned by glacial erosion of the underlying sandstone, limestone, and igneous rocks into low, undulating hills, covered extensively by glacial deposits.

The Orkney island of Mainland has stone breakwaters (the Churchill Barriers) which create havens for wildlife; an ancient ring of standing stones and an uncovered 5000 year old Neolithic village composed of horizontal stones, next to the Bay of Skaill.