Edith Downing, Suffragette Sculptor

Violet Block

Edith Downing Suffragette force-feeding Bernard van Lierop

The unfinished cutting of the block for printing violet.

The hair-drier is used to warm the lino, which softens the material, necessary at normal UK temperatures, though not needed for Picasso, the master of linocut, working in the warmth of southern France. I use a mixture of Japanese and European woodcut chisels, with surgical blades for precision detail. The violet below the green and yellow ochre gives tonal variation and a deeper black in the figures of ‘Avarice’.

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