Leeway (ed. 7 of 20), 1954

Alice Trumbull Mason was an equally accomplished printmaker as she was a painter. Her etchings and woodblock prints garnered notoriety throughout her career, and the medium provided an alternate process for exploring texture, shape, and her concepts of “architectural abstraction.”

For instance, in her woodblock prints like “Leeway” pictured above, Mason was not only able to create a variety of textures using the carving tools, but was able to incorporate the wood grain of the block. Cutting shapes separately with a jigsaw, much like puzzle pieces, offered her the ability to use different colored inks on different shapes.