We collaborated with UCA Rochester on a project for 16 to 18-year-old art students. Huddie Hamper created a woodcut inspired by ‘Prince Bahman and the Dervish’ in Dalziel’s Arabian Nights’ Entertainments (i.e. The Thousand and One Nights), 1865. Here, Hamper reflects on the creative process behind his woodcut ‘Knight and Beggar’:
This work was heavily influenced by the wood engravings of the Dalziel Brothers. I was fascinated by their stylization in their prints and the level of detail shown. I wanted to represent this in my own work through through the medium of a woodcut.
Unlike my usual more rough and choppy woodcuts in this project I wanted to add more detail to give a higher degree of likeness to the source material; but at the same time showing the other influences my ‘style’ (influence) contains, such as the woodcuts of figurative artist and painter Paul Gauguin.
I had never seen the work of the Dalziel brothers before, but I found in a lot of it the figurative stylization I enjoy in painting, wood engravings and illustrative work and was happy to translate this into my own work.
Images ©️ Huddie Hamper, 2017