Through the Night

Through the Night is a reduction woodcut, a technique in which a single block is progressively cut away and reprinted in successive colors, so that the final image survives only on whatever paper was registered in advance — there is no second pull possible once the block is destroyed. The 1987 date and night-scene subject suggest a dark, limited palette built up in deliberate stages, with darker layers laid over lighter ones until a low-key tonal field emerges, a process well suited to the deep blacks and warm interior windows of an after-dark townscape. Dennis turned to reduction printing several times in the late 1980s when he wanted denser color and stronger atmospheric unity than a multi-block approach gave him. The image likely depicts a street, vehicle, or building seen in lamplight, continuing the urban observation that runs across his 1986–87 work but compressing it into a single nocturnal register.