Greg Rennick by Regina Haggo 1

Laying it on the line: the prints of Greg Rennick by Regina Haggo             When Greg Rennick made art, pine chips flew all over the place. That alone was a sign of the enthusiasm, energy and expertise he brought to what he’s best known for: black and white woodcuts.         Rennick, who died at 43 in 2008, created and exhibited for more than 20 years. His woodcuts were snapped up by admirers in New York and London, but disappointingly, not so quickly in Hamilton, where he lived.          He is remembered by friends as an artist who could do anything well — drawing, painting, making little books, even decorating cookies, says Maureen Steuart, a Dundas printmaker. She, Rennick and Gillian Song would get together in Song’s basement in Burlington on Monday afternoons. Steuart recalls Rennick sitting cross-legged on the floor, pine board on his lap and one or two instruments in his hand.  Steuart says he’d maybe sketch one or two lines with a pencil on the pine, but mostly he winged it.  And the chips flew.  He’d print the piece later at home, using black ink on Japanese paper. “I never ever saw him make a mistake,” she says.             Rennick admired the prints of the early 20th-century German Expressionists. His stylized, highly linear woodcuts are similar in style.  But on the whole, his compositions are clearer, his human figures less exaggerated in their forms and gestures.         In fact, his woodcuts are more reminiscent of those produced by Vanessa Bell and Dora Carrington. Bell, Virginia Woolf’s sister, was a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Rennick admired this group of English artists and writers who flourished in the 1920s and ’30s: he did a woodcut portrait of Virginia Woolf. Carrington was associated with the group through Lytton Strachey. Bell and Carrington both illustrated books by Woolf with their black and white woodcuts.          What Rennick especially shares with Carrington is the technique of dividing landscapes into sections and filling each with a different pattern.  [  >>>>> FORWARD ] [Distillate © HA&L + Regina Haggo  |  {from the Greek bios} - the course of a life. Plus a Portfolio of work by Greg Rennick] [This article is supported by the Goethe-Institut Toronto, acknowledged with thanks by the Editor and Samizdat Press.]