Herman Melville Bicentenary Project
I created a linocut print for a project with The Bodleian Library in Oxford, to mark the bicentenary of the birth of Herman Melville and his most famous fictional creation, Moby-Dick.
Bodleian exhibition description
William Rowsell's linocut represents the more traditional entries in the exhibition. Capturing the furious struggle expressed in the extract, he locks whale, man, boat, sea, cloud and sky into a vigorous, swirling image on a paper and in a style that evoke the century in which Moby-Dick is set. As he pulled his prints from the 1828 Albion printing press, William might have wondered what the nine-year old Herman Melville was doing when hands were first laid on that Albion.
Video of me pulling the print in the studio at Oxford Printmakers