Master Printmaker Don Gorvett | “Ogunquit in a Woodcut”

‘There’s a lot of Perkins Cove in my art because I work with what’s around me when I draw and paint. This is where I’ve been. I came to Ogunquit in 68, right out of high school – and I spent my first summer doing nothing but painting here…and thereafter, every summer.’ — Don Gorvett | Artist, Printmaker

Mr. Gorvett is well known for his hand-pulled color woodcuts recording maritime subjects from Boston, MA to Portland, ME, with Ogunquit representing a particularly fertile and essential part of his development as a career artist. 

SUMMER 2020: See “Don Gorvett: Ogunquit in a Woodcut” at Hutchins House Gallery in Ogunquit, Maine

Don Gorvett: Ogunquit in a Woodcut, is an exhibit of selected woodcuts and drawings of Ogunquit done over five decades. The Hutchins House Gallery will be revolving the Ogunquit woodcuts and drawings with new work from Gorvett’s Gloucester studio until mid-October 2020. Gorvett’s work is ALSO always available to be seen at his Portsmouth and Gloucester galleries. Click here to learn more.

As an internationally known artist and one of the premier names in coastal New England Woodcut/Printmaking, Gorvett’s work conveys a mastery of technique; a clear and unique visual voice honoring the legacy of the reduction woodcut technique, while simultaneously elevating the artform through his personal 5+ decades of experience in the process. The end result is a lifetime catalog of eye-candy work cherished by people who love the working waterfront and seaside ‘places’ Gorvett is naturally inclined to depict. The jagged geometry of the rocky shoreline. The rusticity of the coastal landscape, weathered lobster shacks and seafaring vessels at dockside. Gorvett manages to pull the essence out of his surroundings and uses the block and ink to render it back into existence as a print, absolutely true, but also something completely new, completely his own.

Don Gorvett woodcuts are in the permanent collections at public and private institutions, including the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, Boston Athenaeum, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH, Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockport, ME, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK, Harvard University, Boston MA, Museum of Fine Art, Boston, MA, Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, ME, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA, and Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA.

View a video of Don Gorvett creating work in Perkins Cove, Ogunquit

A Conversation With Artist/Printmaker Don Gorvett

During the summer of 2020, I visited Gorvett at Hutchins House Gallery in Ogunquit, Maine, just steps from the famed Perkins Cove footbridge often depicted in his work. This was our conversation…

Thanks for taking the time to meet with me today, Don. It’s great to see some of your iconic Ogunquit prints being exhibited right here at the entrance to Perkins Cove. Why don’t we begin with you telling our readers a little bit about how your journey brought you through Ogunquit – and what those early years were like.

I arrived in Ogunquit in 1968 and found a little one room cabin to rent on Berwick Road. It was right up in front of the green water tower — it’s still there. My intention was to spend the summer painting in Ogunquit before I started coursework in the fall at the School at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

The arrangement I had in Ogunquit worked out well; and I continued spending consecutive summers in Ogunquit, with my winters in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, you’d often find me out painting on the Marginal Way, or in the Ogunquit dunes and marshes, or traveling through town on my bike with a wet canvas in hand. I was juried into the Ogunquit Art Association in 1984. These were also the years when I began developing my printmaking technique.

During my early years in Ogunquit, I led a fairly secluded lifestyle. I didn’t make a lot of personal associations. My focus was on the painting.

And then, in 1990, I moved year-round to Ogunquit and established my Ogunquit printmaking studio in a residential neighborhood off Berwick Road.

For those who may not be familiar with the woodcut medium, can you talk a little bit about the process and why you’re drawn to this art form?

Woodcut is a relief process where you cut the block — where you cut doesn’t print and the other areas do print. It’s a very early technique – one of the earliest methods known to man of reproducing an image.

While it is practiced, and there are artists out there working in reduction woodcut, it’s not a particularly common entree. That’s what I often tell people when they walk into my gallery. We’re like the foreign food restaurant of the galleries around here, because when people visit us, they’re partaking of something that’s not usually digested.

But the printmaking medium has great mystery to it. You draw on that plate and you cut — but you never really know exactly what you have until it’s been inked up and the image comes off. When that image finally reveals itself, it’s always a surprise. I’m never sure what I’m going to get — but I always can’t wait to see it.

Is there anything new you’ve been working on, lately?

As you know, for the summer of 2020, we have a pop-up gallery here at Hutchins House Gallery in Perkins Cove in which we’re showing the “Ogunquit in a Woodcut” exhibition, where visitors can see and purchase selected woodcuts and drawings of Ogunquit that I’ve done over the past five decades. That exhibition continues until mid-October

I’m continuing to use my gallery in downtown Portsmouth, New Hampshire just as I have since 2006 — as the primary source for collectors to access my woodcuts and drawings.

And this past winter, I relocated my studio to Gloucester, Massachusetts — into a new open and airy space at the historic Beacon Marine Basin. We also have a gallery space upstairs at that location, where I’m exhibiting my work alongside that of other regionally and nationally known artists.

Ogunquit, Maine Work By Artist/Printmaker Don Gorvett

See Artist and Printmaker Don Gorvett’s Work

The Don Gorvett Galleries in Portsmouth, NH, and Gloucester, MA, are open year-round, seven days a week by chance and appointment.

At this time, the number of visitors allowed into the galleries at any one time is limited for social distancing and all visitors are required to wear masks and use hand sanitizer.

For more information about the work of Don Gorvett, gallery visits, or information about the popular pre-publish price program for Gorvett woodcuts, reach out to vivienne@dongorvettgallery.com or call 603-436-7278.