Lefner Editions
Dave Lefner, a Los Angeles-based artist, masterfully crafts reduction linocut prints, painstakingly hand-carving linoleum to create intricate, realistic urban landscapes, capturing the essence of vintage city scenes.
Edition 4 Feature
Words by: Dave Lefner
Location: Los Angeles, California, USA
Photo Credit: ©Serena Creative / ©Dave Lefner
I am an artist who focuses almost exclusively on the labour-intensive process of reduction linocut fine art relief prints. (In the most simplified terms possible) I create an image on paper by hand-carving a single block of linoleum to print multiple colour stages using ink, and then running it through a hand-cranked press. I work on a fairly large scale and I’m always striving for a level of realism not often found in the medium.
For the last 23 years, I’ve lived and worked in a place called the Brewery Artist Lofts, just north-east of Downtown Los Angeles, California, USA. With 310 lofts, it is considered the world’s largest artist community. Formerly a brewery built in 1913, it was converted almost 50 years ago. I was born and raised in LA, but I had no idea this place even existed until I serendipitously found out about the biannual Brewery Artwalk Open Studios event. After spending the entire day weaving in and out of the hundreds of artists’ spaces of all shapes and sizes, I made it my mission to live here one day. Within a few months, I had made that a reality. The day I moved into the Brewery changed my life forever.
