Painting with the Carver is an online exhibition of new prints by Jim Dine (b. 1935), one of America’s most celebrated artists, which includes previously unseen hand-painted prints depicting Dine’s signature motifs of robes, tools and hearts. Made over the past 12 months with master printmakers in Austria and Germany, this online exhibition includes Dine’s largest prints to date and a folding screen made from five joining panels.

Dine’s bathrobes, one of his most expressive motifs and enduring vehicles for his explorations of line and colour, began as stand-ins for the artist, which Dine calls ‘autobiography through objects’. Dine has also spoken extensively about his profound relationship with hand tools, and remembers playing with pieces of pipe, hammers and screwdrivers as a young boy in his grandfather’s hardware store. Brushes, hammers, saws and pliers feature prominently in his work, both as the tools of his trade and as an autobiographical motif. Dine has frequently used power-tools to grind, scrape and carve his woodblocks and Painting with the Carver, features woodcuts made by Dine with a chainsaw and motorised chisel.

– Alan Cristea

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Image: Detail from Jim Dine, Asleep with his Tools Jim Dreams (screen), 2018