The “Tiny Cats” series were inspired by black paper silhouettes. When I lived in Paris as a child, we saw artists in the city parks cut silhouettes of children’s profiles from black paper with tiny scissors. It made an impression on me that I have never forgotten. These linocuts feature black cats on colorful backgrounds and measure 2”x 4” or smaller.
I like making large, complicated linocuts, but I also like to work small. It is a lot of fun to simplify a piece of art to the minimum of shapes, lines and colors. I once had a patron say to me, “it is amazing how you can just put blobs of ink on paper and make a recognizable thing!” – he was looking at “Bird”, a naughty cat sitting on top of a bird cage. I also like the effect of red with black and white, so I often use that color palette with many of my really small works.