Words Jo Barnes
Photos Sarah Hartley Photography
C.S. Lewis once said: “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”
Age should never be a barrier to trying something new. Local artist and lifelong learner Graham Scholes is an example of someone who embodies this idea and, at the age of 92, continues to hone his craft of woodblock printing.
“I have always liked drawing and had an interest in visual concepts. You have to find the shapes, the forms, the values before you can draw something,” says Graham. “But you know at 92, I don’t know how much time I’ve got. Every day is a bonus.”
The arc of Graham’s life is an interesting one. After 20 years in the publishing and packaging industry, he forged a new path in his 40s as a self-employed watercolour artist. In the 1990s when Graham was in his 60s, he took up woodblock printmaking and, in his 70s, he began a daunting project – a landmark series of 78 handmade prints made through the highly technical and artistically demanding process of woodblock printing. This series in part depicts all the lighthouses on the west coast of British Columbia.
“Well, I thought it was a great subject to tackle,” says Graham, adding with a grin: “Why not?”
The lighthouse series garnered much attention and Graham was awarded the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Maritime Achievement in 2024. Born in Toronto, Graham’s art skills developed early. “My parents sent me off to the Toronto Art Gallery for Saturday morning classes. I liked building things,” he shares. “My parents could see I had an interest in visual concepts.”
He completed a degree in graphic design at the Western Technical Collegiate, where he studied with renowned Canadian watercolourist Frederick Fraser. Graham remembers the positive impact Fraser had on him. “Fred taught watercolour and perspective. He was a task master. But he was very encouraging. He was never a negative individual, everything was positive.”
It was a turning point for Graham when, after 20 years in the corporate world of printing and publishing, he decided to become a self-employed artist. “I decided I would go into the art business because I had had a lot of success with watercolours in Montreal. In 1970, we moved from Montreal to Barrie,” he says. “The 70s was a time when the art business was vibrant.”
Graham began doing art exhibitions which generated great response and motivated him to begin teaching watercolour painting to others. “My wife, Marnie, and I would set up exhibitions of my work. People would come to see a show and often asked ‘Do you teach it?’ That sounded like a good idea to me. I was a travelling artist and teaching watercolours. We travelled across Canada four times,” shares Graham, adding with a laugh: “We had a 24-foot suitcase called an Airstream trailer!”
In 1987, Graham and his family moved to B.C. It was one unique workshop at the Metchosin International Summer School in 1994 that served as a major turning point in his art career. “I took a two-week workshop with master printmaker Noboru Sawai,” he says. “I really liked it, so much so that I bought $2,000 worth of tools at the workshop!”
Known in Japanese as “Mokuhanga,” meaning “wood block print,” this art form involves an image being printed from a carved block of wood that is pressed by hand with a rubbing disk called a “baren.” Graham uses specialized wood carving knives to carve away the unwanted areas of his design; the uncarved area of the block is what is printed. While the concept is akin to a rubber stamp, the process is more complex and incredibly demanding and results in vibrant and intricate creations.
“I decide how many colours are required to create the image and then I make a block for each colour,” he says. “I use bass wood which is really durable. You can do up to 100 prints before it breaks down. The paper, called ‘hosho,’ is made from mulberry and comes out of Japan.”
Since his introduction to this art, Graham has spent years mastering it and has also become an art educator along the way. He has published books such as Watercolor and How and Let There Be Light, produced a teaching DVD about the Mokuhanga medium, and was invited in 2014 to teach at the Florence School of Fine Arts in Italy.
In 2020, Graham celebrated his 87th birthday and was recognized by the Art Gallery of Victoria, which announced that it would archive his complete set of woodblock prints. However, Graham is not an artist to rest on his laurels and is always answering the call of creativity. “I have a new piece that’s cooking in my brain,” he comments.
Like the lighthouses in his prints, Graham stands as a beacon of inspiration and living proof that age is not a limitation to artistic creativity.
www.woodblockart.ca
