“These woodcuts express the abstract geometric shapes and distant configurations of our architecture in the Northeast. Upon sea waters of estuaries and harbors is mirrored the play of interweaving lights and darks of buildings and piers crowned by steeples and mast tops. I am fascinated by the ghostly quality of buildings looming out of the mists, endowed with strength and endurance. For me, historic architecture represents a bridge between one life-span into another. Abandoned not by time, but by those who built them, our structures remain and continue to wage war with nature’s elements.”   ~  Don Gorvett

Don Gorvett was born in Boston, MA, in 1949 and raised within its environs of Cambridge and Somerville, MA. Much of his youth was spent at the seashore swimming, fishing, and observing fishing-town industry. Don’s family eventually moved to Burlington, MA, where high school art instructor Elinor Marvin discovered his talents. He was privately tutored by Mrs. Marvin, receiving an extraordinary art education, focused on drawing, graphic arts, and theatrical set design. Mr. Gorvett attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts through the Ford Junior Fellowship Grant. After completing graduation requirements, Mr. Gorvett moved his primary residence to Gloucester, MA, to pursue a career in painting. With the encouragement of Elinor Marvin, and the support of longtime summer resident of Ogunquit, Annabelle Lewis, Don continued his annual summer-long painting excursions, since 1968, to Ogunquit, ME. While in Gloucester, Don was introduced to Mrs. Buswell, heiress to the Jacobean style Stillington Hall estate. She offered the well-furnished dressing rooms in the estate’s theater for the artist to live. On the stage above his rooms, he set-up his first etching press and began a series of large-scale woodcuts based on Richard Wagner operatic tetralogy ‘The Ring of the Nibelung.’ He also created a series of drypoint etchings recording the Gloucester waterfront. During his residence at Stillington Hall, he also organized and promoted public classical music concerts and private wedding events. In 1990 Mr. Gorvett made Ogunquit his full-time home, where he continued to develop his reductions woodcut technique.

From 1990 to the present, Don continues to develop his reduction woodcuts. From the beginning, he has stayed a course. Don’s immediate surroundings, the seaside, and harbors are fundamental to his work and are much influenced by a romantic passion for history, drama, and music. His considerable skills as a draughtsman and his thorough understanding of the medium of printmaking are paramount features of his bold, graphic style and the somewhat abstract nature of his imagery. The reduction woodcut marries naturally with the maritime rusticity of New England’s harbor towns. All woodcuts are designed, cut, and editioned by Don in his studio. In 2006 Don Gorvett opened his first gallery with a printmaking studio in historic downtown Portsmouth, NH, and named it Piscataqua Fine Arts.

Early 2020 Don moved his printmaking studio portion of the Portsmouth gallery to the Beacon Marine Basin in Gloucester, MA. Don has renamed his popular Portsmouth destination gallery from Piscataqua Fine Arts to Don Gorvett Gallery. The new studio’s spacious second-floor loft at the historic marina also allows him to exhibit his work and other nationally-known artists and printmakers. We are calling this Don Gorvett Gallery and Studio.

Don Gorvett woodcuts are in public and private collections which including The Museum of Fine Art, Boston, MA, Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, MA, Cambridge University, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA, Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockport, ME, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA, Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA, Duxbury Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, MA, Boston Athenaeum, Boston, MA, Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, ME, Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH., Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME., and Museum of Fine Arts, Hanoi, Vietnam.