Irving Amen

Irving Amen was an American artist who worked in various mediums but his colourful woodcuts are particularly appealing to me. Check out a few of my favourites below and make sure you look at this website dedicated to his work: irvingamen.com

Daniel Pudles

Daniel Pudles is an illustrator who uses wood cuts to produce pieces which often accompany stories in the Guardian, where I first saw his work. Beautiful.

The rain of Kuniyoshi

The Royal Academy of Arts here in London held an exhibition of Utagawa Kuniyoshi block prints a couple of years ago. It was an amazing collection of work and I would say that along with the Mexican Revolutionary Prints exhibition, which I have blogged about before, it was a major influence of me wishing to start out printmaking. The skill, beauty and variety of Kuniyoshi's work is unbelievable and if you get the chance to see an exhibition of his work then it comes highly recommended. If there isn't an exhibition coming to near you soon then buy a book of his work, you won't regret it. I got the catalogue from the exhibition and it is something I regularly look at.

I particularly like the way he represents rain. In straight, deliberate lines at the foreground of the image it really gives the impression of a downpour. Something which is hard to represent while not taking attention away from the rest of the image. I'm sure you'll agree that the images above are stunningly beautiful. Towards the top of my list of things to buy when I am rich: an original Kuniyoshi print.

Anti-military poster in Pisa

I saw this poster for an anti-militarisation meeting while in Pisa a few weeks back. I love the passion the imagary depicts. It is probably not an original and may well come from a Mexican artist but kudos for using a woodcut/linocut on a political poster, more of this in London please. I may well be tempted to start attending meetings again if they did.