The printmaker
Printmaker Leslie Peebles relaxes in her classroom at P.K. Yonge Developmental Research school Wednesday, December 2, 2009. Behind her are some of her paintings of anthropomorphic trees.
The Gainesville SunPublished: Monday, February 8, 2010 at 10:47 p.m.
Last Modified: Monday, February 8, 2010 at 10:47 p.m.
Artist Leslie Peebles was trained as a painter, not a printmaker. But her art medium underwent a transformation when in 1993 Peebles began teaching art at Price Middle School in Interlachen.
Facts
What inspires printmaker and painter Leslie Peebles?
My Family History
The album my parents made for me includes a picture of my great-great-great-grandmother, who was an aunt of Jesse James.
My Oil Paints
My finestand best colors.
Frida Kahlo
This surrealist artist, who often wore flowers in her hair, is my favorite. I often dress as Frida for Halloween.
My Camera
Nikon D80.
Sandhill Cranes
Especially on Paynes Prairie.
My Granny
Dressed as a 1920's flapper. She was a wild one.
My Rings
My sapphire engagement ring and wedding ring.
My Black Belt And Gi
My Cuong Nhu Black Belt and Gi top.
Ichetucknee River
And all its respective wildlife.
My grandson's drawing
Where he wrote "I always love you Nana."
"The high school art teacher had all this linoleum and linoleum tools, and she said, 'I absolutely hate this medium. Do you want this stuff for your middle school kids?'" Peebles recalls. Seeing the potential in linocut printmaking for her students, Peebles accepted the offer.
"I loved the medium. I loved what the kids did with the medium," Peebles says from her studio at the Sweetwater Print Cooperative on South Main Street. In fact, Peebles was so inspired by her students' work, she began to experiment with linocut printmaking herself. It offered her a viable way of creating artwork again after getting married, earning her master's degree in art education from UF and having three children. She also saw printmaking as a feasible way to earn a living as an artist because she could make multiple prints from a single block. In the world of printmaking, each print, or impression, is considered an original work of art.
Peebles, 51, has been carving out a successful career for herself as a linocut printmaker ever since. Her intricately detailed linocut prints of natural Florida flora and fauna have been displayed at the Florida Museum of Natural History, the Thomas Center Galleries, the Hippodrome State Theatre's art gallery and elsewhere around the region. From 2004 to 2006, she was the visual artist in residence at Shands at AGH. Last year, she was the featured artist on the promotional posters for the Downtown Festival and Art Show in Gainesville. She also won the festival's Award of Merit in 2007 and Award of Excellence in 2008.
She currently teaches printmaking and art to middle and high school students at P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School. She re-married in 2009 and is also helping her husband, Richard McCauley, to build an arts-in-medicine component to his home care-giving company, Home Helpers.
An ancient art
Block printing (also known as relief printing) is the earliest form of printmaking. For centuries, it involved carving an image or a design into a block of wood, which was then inked and pressed against fabric or paper to make an impression. Early in the 20th century, printmakers discovered that linoleum — the same material used for flooring — had a number of advantages over wood.
"It's much more reliable than wood. You don't have to worry about the grain," Peebles explains. Linoleum is a lot easier to carve and less expensive than wood, too.
"To get a fine, perfect piece of wood, it has to be end-grain and pieced together, and it can be prohibitively expensive," Peebles says. Plus wood can splinter when carved. Because it is so easy to handle, linoleum has become the carving medium of choice for block printing — and for teaching the technique to art students.
Peebles begins each of her pieces by creating a drawing on paper, which she then transfers to the linoleum block with carbon paper. Then she uses a V-shaped chisel (gouge) to carve away the parts of the image she doesn't want to print. The remaining raised parts of the block create the printed image.
Carving is arguably the most labor-intensive part of the process. Peebles says that for some really intricate areas of her drawings, it might take her an hour to carve a square inch. She estimates it may take up to 25 hours to carve a 9-by-12 piece of linoleum.
Making the print
As painstaking as carving the block may be, it's just one part of the process. Making the prints is a skill in itself, one that Peebles has spent the better part of the past 12 years perfecting.
"It took me years of practice to get to where I could get reliably good results from my prints," says Peebles, who likens the learning process to that of a journeyman carpenter. Everything from the consistency and amount of ink on the brayer (roller) to the amount of moisture on the block or paper — even the type of ink and paper used — affects the quality of the print.
Printing can be done by hand or on a press. For hand-printing, the block is first inked with a brayer. Then a piece of paper is placed over the block and rubbed with a baren (a disk-like device with a flat bottom and a handle on the other side) or the back of a spoon.
"You can hand-rub a water-based ink on dry paper, but you have to use a really thin, dry paper like rice or mulberry, and you have to just rub and rub and rub and rub it," Peebles says. "It takes a lot of practice to know exactly how much ink and exactly the right pressure and time it takes to transfer the image."
Peebles prefers using oil-based inks, which require more pressure to transfer the image to paper than she can muster with a hand-held baren. One reason she joined the Sweetwater Print Cooperative in 1999 was so that she could have access to a printing press. Peebles uses the co-op's 19th-century Charles Brand press for making her limited edition prints — usually in lots of 50 or 100. For each print she makes, she must re-ink the linoleum block and then hand-crank the block, sandwiched between a printing blanket and a damp piece of paper, through the rollers of the press.
Life on the farm
Peebles' first linoleum print was a rooster, which she printed on T-shirts for her parents' 50th anniversary. It seemed a fitting gift for her father, a Wall Street broker-turned-international businessman who after 20 years of working and living in the big city decided that he'd rather be raising chickens. When the family relocated from the suburbs of New York to a chicken farm in rural North Florida in the early 1970s, 12-year-old Peebles embraced the move.
"I was kind of an introvert and a nature girl," she says. The family had bought an 80-acre parcel of land about 15 miles from Live Oak and a mile away from the Suwannee River. "I felt that I had died and been reborn and gone to heaven. I was always outside. I loved natural Florida. I knew where every animal was — every snake and tortoise and cotton rat and foxhole and rabbit hole."
She credits her art teacher at Suwannee High School, Jeffrey Ann Smart Baisdon, for propelling her toward a career as an artist.
"I don't think I'd be an artist if it wasn't for her because she was such a wonderful teacher and she encouraged me," Peebles says. "Plus being so isolated and out on the farm, this is what I did to pass my time."
Landscapes and dreamscapes
Much of Peebles' work is inspired by her love of nature. Many of her linocut prints capture the natural beauty of North Central Florida, whether it's a flock of sandhill cranes circling a prairie, a pair of snapping turtles embracing in a river, or a menacing gator peering out from a swamp.
But she is also inspired by dream images.
"I have a whole body of work based on dream imagery that's more surreal [than the linocut prints]," she says. "When the hurricanes came through and I saw the trees moving and dancing wildly like people on a dance floor, it really changed my perception of trees." This inspired a series of paintings of anthropomorphic trees.
Her students continue to inspire her, as well. While working as an art teacher at the Duval Fine Arts Academy from 2002 to 2007, Peebles created a series of prints inspired by students in her classes. "I haven't done any P.K. Yonge students yet, but I've been thinking about it," she says.
Which medium does Peebles prefer: printmaking or painting? She loves them both.
"I find painting to be spontaneous and invigorating, while printmaking is more meditative," she says. But because printmaking is so physically demanding and hard on her joints, Peebles has found herself once again drawn to painting.
"I love to paint. That's what my first love was; that's what my degree was in," she says.
Peebles earned a bachelor's degree in studio art and painting from Newcomb College in New Orleans. "So I'm kind of building my skill level and my body of work with painting, because I know that eventually I'll have to give this up."
But that transition is not likely to happen any time soon. She recently began a book project with a man from High Springs whom she describes as a wonderful storyteller.
"He's been canoeing the Ichetucknee for 50 years and has made all kinds of important discoveries on the river," she says. "I've been hanging out with him and recording and illustrating his stories. So that's going to keep me carving for a while longer."
More than anything else, through her paintings and prints, Peebles aspires to capture and preserve Florida's natural beauty for posterity.
"I want to share the astonishing beauty that I see in the world with other people, who may pass right by and not see that tree and that landscape. I want people to see trees as individuals, as significant and honored beings on this earth. I want people to see the waterways in Florida as so precious that they're not going to destroy them or ruin them for future generations. I want everyone to see, see, see how incredible this place is. Love it, cherish it. Care for it. I guess that's one of my missions."
Artist Leslie Peebles was trained as a painter, not a printmaker. But her art medium underwent a transformation when in 1993 Peebles began teaching art at Price Middle School in Interlachen.
"The high school art teacher had all this linoleum and linoleum tools, and she said, 'I absolutely hate this medium. Do you want this stuff for your middle school kids?'" Peebles recalls. Seeing the potential in linocut printmaking for her students, Peebles accepted the offer.
"I loved the medium. I loved what the kids did with the medium," Peebles says from her studio at the Sweetwater Print Cooperative on South Main Street. In fact, Peebles was so inspired by her students' work, she began to experiment with linocut printmaking herself. It offered her a viable way of creating artwork again after getting married, earning her master's degree in art education from UF and having three children. She also saw printmaking as a feasible way to earn a living as an artist because she could make multiple prints from a single block. In the world of printmaking, each print, or impression, is considered an original work of art.
Peebles, 51, has been carving out a successful career for herself as a linocut printmaker ever since. Her intricately detailed linocut prints of natural Florida flora and fauna have been displayed at the Florida Museum of Natural History, the Thomas Center Galleries, the Hippodrome State Theatre's art gallery and elsewhere around the region. From 2004 to 2006, she was the visual artist in residence at Shands at AGH. Last year, she was the featured artist on the promotional posters for the Downtown Festival and Art Show in Gainesville. She also won the festival's Award of Merit in 2007 and Award of Excellence in 2008.
She currently teaches printmaking and art to middle and high school students at P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School. She re-married in 2009 and is also helping her husband, Richard McCauley, to build an arts-in-medicine component to his home care-giving company, Home Helpers.
An ancient art
Block printing (also known as relief printing) is the earliest form of printmaking. For centuries, it involved carving an image or a design into a block of wood, which was then inked and pressed against fabric or paper to make an impression. Early in the 20th century, printmakers discovered that linoleum — the same material used for flooring — had a number of advantages over wood.
"It's much more reliable than wood. You don't have to worry about the grain," Peebles explains. Linoleum is a lot easier to carve and less expensive than wood, too.
"To get a fine, perfect piece of wood, it has to be end-grain and pieced together, and it can be prohibitively expensive," Peebles says. Plus wood can splinter when carved. Because it is so easy to handle, linoleum has become the carving medium of choice for block printing — and for teaching the technique to art students.
Peebles begins each of her pieces by creating a drawing on paper, which she then transfers to the linoleum block with carbon paper. Then she uses a V-shaped chisel (gouge) to carve away the parts of the image she doesn't want to print. The remaining raised parts of the block create the printed image.
Carving is arguably the most labor-intensive part of the process. Peebles says that for some really intricate areas of her drawings, it might take her an hour to carve a square inch. She estimates it may take up to 25 hours to carve a 9-by-12 piece of linoleum.
Making the print
As painstaking as carving the block may be, it's just one part of the process. Making the prints is a skill in itself, one that Peebles has spent the better part of the past 12 years perfecting.
"It took me years of practice to get to where I could get reliably good results from my prints," says Peebles, who likens the learning process to that of a journeyman carpenter. Everything from the consistency and amount of ink on the brayer (roller) to the amount of moisture on the block or paper — even the type of ink and paper used — affects the quality of the print.
Printing can be done by hand or on a press. For hand-printing, the block is first inked with a brayer. Then a piece of paper is placed over the block and rubbed with a baren (a disk-like device with a flat bottom and a handle on the other side) or the back of a spoon.
"You can hand-rub a water-based ink on dry paper, but you have to use a really thin, dry paper like rice or mulberry, and you have to just rub and rub and rub and rub it," Peebles says. "It takes a lot of practice to know exactly how much ink and exactly the right pressure and time it takes to transfer the image."
Peebles prefers using oil-based inks, which require more pressure to transfer the image to paper than she can muster with a hand-held baren. One reason she joined the Sweetwater Print Cooperative in 1999 was so that she could have access to a printing press. Peebles uses the co-op's 19th-century Charles Brand press for making her limited edition prints — usually in lots of 50 or 100. For each print she makes, she must re-ink the linoleum block and then hand-crank the block, sandwiched between a printing blanket and a damp piece of paper, through the rollers of the press.
Life on the farm
Peebles' first linoleum print was a rooster, which she printed on T-shirts for her parents' 50th anniversary. It seemed a fitting gift for her father, a Wall Street broker-turned-international businessman who after 20 years of working and living in the big city decided that he'd rather be raising chickens. When the family relocated from the suburbs of New York to a chicken farm in rural North Florida in the early 1970s, 12-year-old Peebles embraced the move.
"I was kind of an introvert and a nature girl," she says. The family had bought an 80-acre parcel of land about 15 miles from Live Oak and a mile away from the Suwannee River. "I felt that I had died and been reborn and gone to heaven. I was always outside. I loved natural Florida. I knew where every animal was — every snake and tortoise and cotton rat and foxhole and rabbit hole."
She credits her art teacher at Suwannee High School, Jeffrey Ann Smart Baisdon, for propelling her toward a career as an artist.
"I don't think I'd be an artist if it wasn't for her because she was such a wonderful teacher and she encouraged me," Peebles says. "Plus being so isolated and out on the farm, this is what I did to pass my time."
Landscapes and dreamscapes
Much of Peebles' work is inspired by her love of nature. Many of her linocut prints capture the natural beauty of North Central Florida, whether it's a flock of sandhill cranes circling a prairie, a pair of snapping turtles embracing in a river, or a menacing gator peering out from a swamp.
But she is also inspired by dream images.
"I have a whole body of work based on dream imagery that's more surreal [than the linocut prints]," she says. "When the hurricanes came through and I saw the trees moving and dancing wildly like people on a dance floor, it really changed my perception of trees." This inspired a series of paintings of anthropomorphic trees.
Her students continue to inspire her, as well. While working as an art teacher at the Duval Fine Arts Academy from 2002 to 2007, Peebles created a series of prints inspired by students in her classes. "I haven't done any P.K. Yonge students yet, but I've been thinking about it," she says.
Which medium does Peebles prefer: printmaking or painting? She loves them both.
"I find painting to be spontaneous and invigorating, while printmaking is more meditative," she says. But because printmaking is so physically demanding and hard on her joints, Peebles has found herself once again drawn to painting.
"I love to paint. That's what my first love was; that's what my degree was in," she says.
Peebles earned a bachelor's degree in studio art and painting from Newcomb College in New Orleans. "So I'm kind of building my skill level and my body of work with painting, because I know that eventually I'll have to give this up."
But that transition is not likely to happen any time soon. She recently began a book project with a man from High Springs whom she describes as a wonderful storyteller.
"He's been canoeing the Ichetucknee for 50 years and has made all kinds of important discoveries on the river," she says. "I've been hanging out with him and recording and illustrating his stories. So that's going to keep me carving for a while longer."
More than anything else, through her paintings and prints, Peebles aspires to capture and preserve Florida's natural beauty for posterity.
"I want to share the astonishing beauty that I see in the world with other people, who may pass right by and not see that tree and that landscape. I want people to see trees as individuals, as significant and honored beings on this earth. I want people to see the waterways in Florida as so precious that they're not going to destroy them or ruin them for future generations. I want everyone to see, see, see how incredible this place is. Love it, cherish it. Care for it. I guess that's one of my missions."
Artist Leslie Peebles was trained as a painter, not a printmaker. But her art medium underwent a transformation when in 1993 Peebles began teaching art at Price Middle School in Interlachen.
"The high school art teacher had all this linoleum and linoleum tools, and she said, 'I absolutely hate this medium. Do you want this stuff for your middle school kids?'" Peebles recalls. Seeing the potential in linocut printmaking for her students, Peebles accepted the offer.
"I loved the medium. I loved what the kids did with the medium," Peebles says from her studio at the Sweetwater Print Cooperative on South Main Street. In fact, Peebles was so inspired by her students' work, she began to experiment with linocut printmaking herself. It offered her a viable way of creating artwork again after getting married, earning her master's degree in art education from UF and having three children. She also saw printmaking as a feasible way to earn a living as an artist because she could make multiple prints from a single block. In the world of printmaking, each print, or impression, is considered an original work of art.
Peebles, 51, has been carving out a successful career for herself as a linocut printmaker ever since. Her intricately detailed linocut prints of natural Florida flora and fauna have been displayed at the Florida Museum of Natural History, the Thomas Center Galleries, the Hippodrome State Theatre's art gallery and elsewhere around the region. From 2004 to 2006, she was the visual artist in residence at Shands at AGH. Last year, she was the featured artist on the promotional posters for the Downtown Festival and Art Show in Gainesville. She also won the festival's Award of Merit in 2007 and Award of Excellence in 2008.
She currently teaches printmaking and art to middle and high school students at P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School. She re-married in 2009 and is also helping her husband, Richard McCauley, to build an arts-in-medicine component to his home care-giving company, Home Helpers.
An ancient art
Block printing (also known as relief printing) is the earliest form of printmaking. For centuries, it involved carving an image or a design into a block of wood, which was then inked and pressed against fabric or paper to make an impression. Early in the 20th century, printmakers discovered that linoleum — the same material used for flooring — had a number of advantages over wood.
"It's much more reliable than wood. You don't have to worry about the grain," Peebles explains. Linoleum is a lot easier to carve and less expensive than wood, too.
"To get a fine, perfect piece of wood, it has to be end-grain and pieced together, and it can be prohibitively expensive," Peebles says. Plus wood can splinter when carved. Because it is so easy to handle, linoleum has become the carving medium of choice for block printing — and for teaching the technique to art students.
Peebles begins each of her pieces by creating a drawing on paper, which she then transfers to the linoleum block with carbon paper. Then she uses a V-shaped chisel (gouge) to carve away the parts of the image she doesn't want to print. The remaining raised parts of the block create the printed image.
Carving is arguably the most labor-intensive part of the process. Peebles says that for some really intricate areas of her drawings, it might take her an hour to carve a square inch. She estimates it may take up to 25 hours to carve a 9-by-12 piece of linoleum.
Making the print
As painstaking as carving the block may be, it's just one part of the process. Making the prints is a skill in itself, one that Peebles has spent the better part of the past 12 years perfecting.
"It took me years of practice to get to where I could get reliably good results from my prints," says Peebles, who likens the learning process to that of a journeyman carpenter. Everything from the consistency and amount of ink on the brayer (roller) to the amount of moisture on the block or paper — even the type of ink and paper used — affects the quality of the print.
Printing can be done by hand or on a press. For hand-printing, the block is first inked with a brayer. Then a piece of paper is placed over the block and rubbed with a baren (a disk-like device with a flat bottom and a handle on the other side) or the back of a spoon.
"You can hand-rub a water-based ink on dry paper, but you have to use a really thin, dry paper like rice or mulberry, and you have to just rub and rub and rub and rub it," Peebles says. "It takes a lot of practice to know exactly how much ink and exactly the right pressure and time it takes to transfer the image."
Peebles prefers using oil-based inks, which require more pressure to transfer the image to paper than she can muster with a hand-held baren. One reason she joined the Sweetwater Print Cooperative in 1999 was so that she could have access to a printing press. Peebles uses the co-op's 19th-century Charles Brand press for making her limited edition prints — usually in lots of 50 or 100. For each print she makes, she must re-ink the linoleum block and then hand-crank the block, sandwiched between a printing blanket and a damp piece of paper, through the rollers of the press.
Life on the farm
Peebles' first linoleum print was a rooster, which she printed on T-shirts for her parents' 50th anniversary. It seemed a fitting gift for her father, a Wall Street broker-turned-international businessman who after 20 years of working and living in the big city decided that he'd rather be raising chickens. When the family relocated from the suburbs of New York to a chicken farm in rural North Florida in the early 1970s, 12-year-old Peebles embraced the move.
"I was kind of an introvert and a nature girl," she says. The family had bought an 80-acre parcel of land about 15 miles from Live Oak and a mile away from the Suwannee River. "I felt that I had died and been reborn and gone to heaven. I was always outside. I loved natural Florida. I knew where every animal was — every snake and tortoise and cotton rat and foxhole and rabbit hole."
She credits her art teacher at Suwannee High School, Jeffrey Ann Smart Baisdon, for propelling her toward a career as an artist.
"I don't think I'd be an artist if it wasn't for her because she was such a wonderful teacher and she encouraged me," Peebles says. "Plus being so isolated and out on the farm, this is what I did to pass my time."
Landscapes and dreamscapes
Much of Peebles' work is inspired by her love of nature. Many of her linocut prints capture the natural beauty of North Central Florida, whether it's a flock of sandhill cranes circling a prairie, a pair of snapping turtles embracing in a river, or a menacing gator peering out from a swamp.
But she is also inspired by dream images.
"I have a whole body of work based on dream imagery that's more surreal [than the linocut prints]," she says. "When the hurricanes came through and I saw the trees moving and dancing wildly like people on a dance floor, it really changed my perception of trees." This inspired a series of paintings of anthropomorphic trees.
Her students continue to inspire her, as well. While working as an art teacher at the Duval Fine Arts Academy from 2002 to 2007, Peebles created a series of prints inspired by students in her classes. "I haven't done any P.K. Yonge students yet, but I've been thinking about it," she says.
Which medium does Peebles prefer: printmaking or painting? She loves them both.
"I find painting to be spontaneous and invigorating, while printmaking is more meditative," she says. But because printmaking is so physically demanding and hard on her joints, Peebles has found herself once again drawn to painting.
"I love to paint. That's what my first love was; that's what my degree was in," she says.
Peebles earned a bachelor's degree in studio art and painting from Newcomb College in New Orleans. "So I'm kind of building my skill level and my body of work with painting, because I know that eventually I'll have to give this up."
But that transition is not likely to happen any time soon. She recently began a book project with a man from High Springs whom she describes as a wonderful storyteller.
"He's been canoeing the Ichetucknee for 50 years and has made all kinds of important discoveries on the river," she says. "I've been hanging out with him and recording and illustrating his stories. So that's going to keep me carving for a while longer."
More than anything else, through her paintings and prints, Peebles aspires to capture and preserve Florida's natural beauty for posterity.
"I want to share the astonishing beauty that I see in the world with other people, who may pass right by and not see that tree and that landscape. I want people to see trees as individuals, as significant and honored beings on this earth. I want people to see the waterways in Florida as so precious that they're not going to destroy them or ruin them for future generations. I want everyone to see, see, see how incredible this place is. Love it, cherish it. Care for it. I guess that's one of my missions."
Artist Leslie Peebles was trained as a painter, not a printmaker. But her art medium underwent a transformation when in 1993 Peebles began teaching art at Price Middle School in Interlachen.
"The high school art teacher had all this linoleum and linoleum tools, and she said, 'I absolutely hate this medium. Do you want this stuff for your middle school kids?'" Peebles recalls. Seeing the potential in linocut printmaking for her students, Peebles accepted the offer.
"I loved the medium. I loved what the kids did with the medium," Peebles says from her studio at the Sweetwater Print Cooperative on South Main Street. In fact, Peebles was so inspired by her students' work, she began to experiment with linocut printmaking herself. It offered her a viable way of creating artwork again after getting married, earning her master's degree in art education from UF and having three children. She also saw printmaking as a feasible way to earn a living as an artist because she could make multiple prints from a single block. In the world of printmaking, each print, or impression, is considered an original work of art.
Peebles, 51, has been carving out a successful career for herself as a linocut printmaker ever since. Her intricately detailed linocut prints of natural Florida flora and fauna have been displayed at the Florida Museum of Natural History, the Thomas Center Galleries, the Hippodrome State Theatre's art gallery and elsewhere around the region. From 2004 to 2006, she was the visual artist in residence at Shands at AGH. Last year, she was the featured artist on the promotional posters for the Downtown Festival and Art Show in Gainesville. She also won the festival's Award of Merit in 2007 and Award of Excellence in 2008.
She currently teaches printmaking and art to middle and high school students at P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School. She re-married in 2009 and is also helping her husband, Richard McCauley, to build an arts-in-medicine component to his home care-giving company, Home Helpers.
An ancient art
Block printing (also known as relief printing) is the earliest form of printmaking. For centuries, it involved carving an image or a design into a block of wood, which was then inked and pressed against fabric or paper to make an impression. Early in the 20th century, printmakers discovered that linoleum — the same material used for flooring — had a number of advantages over wood.
"It's much more reliable than wood. You don't have to worry about the grain," Peebles explains. Linoleum is a lot easier to carve and less expensive than wood, too.
"To get a fine, perfect piece of wood, it has to be end-grain and pieced together, and it can be prohibitively expensive," Peebles says. Plus wood can splinter when carved. Because it is so easy to handle, linoleum has become the carving medium of choice for block printing — and for teaching the technique to art students.
Peebles begins each of her pieces by creating a drawing on paper, which she then transfers to the linoleum block with carbon paper. Then she uses a V-shaped chisel (gouge) to carve away the parts of the image she doesn't want to print. The remaining raised parts of the block create the printed image.
Carving is arguably the most labor-intensive part of the process. Peebles says that for some really intricate areas of her drawings, it might take her an hour to carve a square inch. She estimates it may take up to 25 hours to carve a 9-by-12 piece of linoleum.
Making the print
As painstaking as carving the block may be, it's just one part of the process. Making the prints is a skill in itself, one that Peebles has spent the better part of the past 12 years perfecting.
"It took me years of practice to get to where I could get reliably good results from my prints," says Peebles, who likens the learning process to that of a journeyman carpenter. Everything from the consistency and amount of ink on the brayer (roller) to the amount of moisture on the block or paper — even the type of ink and paper used — affects the quality of the print.
Printing can be done by hand or on a press. For hand-printing, the block is first inked with a brayer. Then a piece of paper is placed over the block and rubbed with a baren (a disk-like device with a flat bottom and a handle on the other side) or the back of a spoon.
"You can hand-rub a water-based ink on dry paper, but you have to use a really thin, dry paper like rice or mulberry, and you have to just rub and rub and rub and rub it," Peebles says. "It takes a lot of practice to know exactly how much ink and exactly the right pressure and time it takes to transfer the image."
Peebles prefers using oil-based inks, which require more pressure to transfer the image to paper than she can muster with a hand-held baren. One reason she joined the Sweetwater Print Cooperative in 1999 was so that she could have access to a printing press. Peebles uses the co-op's 19th-century Charles Brand press for making her limited edition prints — usually in lots of 50 or 100. For each print she makes, she must re-ink the linoleum block and then hand-crank the block, sandwiched between a printing blanket and a damp piece of paper, through the rollers of the press.
Life on the farm
Peebles' first linoleum print was a rooster, which she printed on T-shirts for her parents' 50th anniversary. It seemed a fitting gift for her father, a Wall Street broker-turned-international businessman who after 20 years of working and living in the big city decided that he'd rather be raising chickens. When the family relocated from the suburbs of New York to a chicken farm in rural North Florida in the early 1970s, 12-year-old Peebles embraced the move.
"I was kind of an introvert and a nature girl," she says. The family had bought an 80-acre parcel of land about 15 miles from Live Oak and a mile away from the Suwannee River. "I felt that I had died and been reborn and gone to heaven. I was always outside. I loved natural Florida. I knew where every animal was — every snake and tortoise and cotton rat and foxhole and rabbit hole."
She credits her art teacher at Suwannee High School, Jeffrey Ann Smart Baisdon, for propelling her toward a career as an artist.
"I don't think I'd be an artist if it wasn't for her because she was such a wonderful teacher and she encouraged me," Peebles says. "Plus being so isolated and out on the farm, this is what I did to pass my time."
Landscapes and dreamscapes
Much of Peebles' work is inspired by her love of nature. Many of her linocut prints capture the natural beauty of North Central Florida, whether it's a flock of sandhill cranes circling a prairie, a pair of snapping turtles embracing in a river, or a menacing gator peering out from a swamp.
But she is also inspired by dream images.
"I have a whole body of work based on dream imagery that's more surreal [than the linocut prints]," she says. "When the hurricanes came through and I saw the trees moving and dancing wildly like people on a dance floor, it really changed my perception of trees." This inspired a series of paintings of anthropomorphic trees.
Her students continue to inspire her, as well. While working as an art teacher at the Duval Fine Arts Academy from 2002 to 2007, Peebles created a series of prints inspired by students in her classes. "I haven't done any P.K. Yonge students yet, but I've been thinking about it," she says.
Which medium does Peebles prefer: printmaking or painting? She loves them both.
"I find painting to be spontaneous and invigorating, while printmaking is more meditative," she says. But because printmaking is so physically demanding and hard on her joints, Peebles has found herself once again drawn to painting.
"I love to paint. That's what my first love was; that's what my degree was in," she says.
Peebles earned a bachelor's degree in studio art and painting from Newcomb College in New Orleans. "So I'm kind of building my skill level and my body of work with painting, because I know that eventually I'll have to give this up."
But that transition is not likely to happen any time soon. She recently began a book project with a man from High Springs whom she describes as a wonderful storyteller.
"He's been canoeing the Ichetucknee for 50 years and has made all kinds of important discoveries on the river," she says. "I've been hanging out with him and recording and illustrating his stories. So that's going to keep me carving for a while longer."
More than anything else, through her paintings and prints, Peebles aspires to capture and preserve Florida's natural beauty for posterity.
"I want to share the astonishing beauty that I see in the world with other people, who may pass right by and not see that tree and that landscape. I want people to see trees as individuals, as significant and honored beings on this earth. I want people to see the waterways in Florida as so precious that they're not going to destroy them or ruin them for future generations. I want everyone to see, see, see how incredible this place is. Love it, cherish it. Care for it. I guess that's one of my missions."
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