what lies beneath
Artist Reid Coyner not only chisels away at wood to create art, but also within himself to discover who he was
always meant to be
By Emory Rakestraw
HUMANS are like
oceans. We reveal
small depths on the
surface, but much
more is uncovered
when diving in, some never before
uncovered.
Like secrets and sea creatures
that linger beneath, chiseling away
at a woodblock to create art also
exposes. For artist Reid Coyner, the
intertwining of perceived, imaginary
and personal depth has been uncov-ered
layer by layer over the years.
Growing up in Atlantic Beach
helped spawn his early fascination
with the ocean. Today, many of his
prints revolve around sea creatures
or swimming, the magic of the
ocean and what might await, the
imaginary worlds we create when
we’re not able to see or venture to
the bottom.
“Water meant freedom — free-dom
to not be two-dimensional
earthbound but being able to move
freely in all directions. I have always
loved the way water affects the way
things are seen,” he says. “The opti-cal
warping from wave motions, the watery depth perception. To me,
the interest was the relationship between objects and water.”
Many of his works examine that relationship. What Lies Beneath
features a goggle-wearing swimmer bubbling up to the surface as fish
swirl about. The swimmer only takes up a fourth of the total piece, with
a large portion dictated by the mesmerizing flow of water and how
those components mingle. There is a sense of mystery and surprise.
There’s also growth within movement. The swimmer seems stunted
among the main subjects and their freedom to float about.
Coyner grew up in a strict household. While today he is relearning
and reinventing his inner child, he had a hidden love for art and created
his first piece at age 3.
54 august 2021
WBM
“My brother brought home a
linoleum woodblock and some cut-ters,”
he says. “He was working and
working. Mom kept saying, ‘You’ll
figure it out.’ I snatched it from him,
and I did it. I cut my first block at the
age of 3, and I still have the block.”
He was told art and music weren’t
acceptable focuses of study. Later
at university, he studied design to
appease his parents.
“School constantly said design is
not art and has no art involved,” he
says. “If I was working in the studio
on a watercolor or something not
assigned, the teacher would often
rip it up if they could find it.”
A strict discipline and strict-er
household handicapped an
acceptable experience of youth
and development of artistic pur-suits.
He knew of his secret talent,
sometimes not even having to learn
the process. Like creating a design
from a blank surface, this process
wasn’t step-by-step, it was natural.
Being self-taught was sometimes
a study in reverse engineering. He
would be able to duplicate the out-come
then later learn the steps that created it.
“Being born and educated before the personal computer, digital
camera, and pretty much the commercially available photocopier, I am
concerned with telling my own visual story, developing my own visual
vocabulary,” he says. “What I am doing is telling my own story, my own
warped and fun visions of what I see or want to see. Painting and print-making
are both telling the fabrication of dimension and space. In reali-ty,
it is just flat marks on paper. We have the story of light and dark, cut
and skip, and of course color; these are our tools. In the purist form, art
is an abstraction from the real world and not a 1:1 duplication or clone.”
Woodblock printing is the oldest form of printmaking, widely used in
Asia and dating back to the 5th century.
art treatise
Artist Reid Coyner created his likeness in a hand-colored woodcut.