Biography

Liv Rainey-Smith is an artist specializing in hand-pulled xylographic prints. Her imagery draws primarily upon historic styles, folklore, dreams, and esoteric traditions. Rainey-Smith’s woodcut process incorporates a mixture of traditional and modern tools as well as a blend of European and Japanese printmaking technique. She pulls her own fine art prints in small editions on both paper and animal parchment.

Rainey-Smith completed her BFA at the Oregon College of Art of Craft in 2008. Two woodcut prints from her thesis, The Four Portlanders of the Apocalypse, may be glimpsed in Season 2, Episode 7 of Portlandia. Since graduation, she has worked full time as a woodcut printmaker in Portland, Oregon. In 2013 she took the business name Xylographilia (“Love of Woodcut”) to reflect her love of the art form. She was accepted as a professional member of Print Arts Northwest in 2010.

Her work has gained a substantial audience within the esoteric art world both locally and abroad. In addition to her self-directed work, she has also collaborated with Three Hands Press on a number of titles including Michael Howard’s Children of Cain, A Rose Veiled in Black, and most notably Robert Fitzgerald’s Arcanum Bestiarum for which she created over fifty original woodcuts.

In addition to being an affiliate of Three Hands Press, Rainey-Smith has contributed art to titles from Rubedo Press, PS Publishing, and other publications. She has served as the artist liaison of the annual Esoteric Book Conference in Seattle, Washington since 2011. She is also a regular guest and contributor to the annual H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival & CthulhuCon, where she has competed in the Pickman’s Apprentice Live Drawing Competition. In lieu of drawing, she races to complete an original woodcut print based on an audience prompt within a ninety-minute deadline.

Statement

As an artist working in a medium which demands patience and foresight, I enjoy the challenge of tempering impulse with process. My approach to woodcut printmaking is an ever developing system of technical control and precision with space left for chance and chaos. This ever changing form of balance is portrayed most acutely in my Iunges series, depictions of shifting forms suggested by the patterns in the wood they are carved from. These reduction prints, carved with minimal preparatory sketching, are moments of communication and revelation, to be grouped and paired as representations of harmonious discord.

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