Highlights from [Baren] Exchange #68 (Part 4 of 4)

This the last of four posts highlighting prints from  Baren Forum's #68 Exchange. The theme was "Nudes", and the paper size was 8" x 8". The first post can be found here and the second can be found here. 

Fourth: simple lines 
Featuring Study by Joseph Taylor (above) and  mons Veneris by Andrew Stone  (below.) 

In both of these prints I greatly appreciate the economy with which the artists describe parts of the human figure. Both border on the abstract, and yet convincingly capture the curved, organic contours of human bodies. 

The first describes a man's torso in stark, bold, almost uniform white lines. Black squares counterbalance the figure's weight. In the colophon Taylor describes it almost apologetically as a "quick study," but often it is the work done most swiftly and spontaneously that is also the most free and natural.

The second print describes a woman's pubic hair, labia, and thighs. There is a subtle sensitivity of line that achieves balance without perfect symmetry. Stone offers some noteworthy thoughts about this print and subject on his own blog both here and here. 

Highlights from Baren Exchange #67 (Part 1 of 3)

I am very excited to have received the prints from Baren Print Exchange #67. So much so that I'm going to devote three posts to highlighting some of my favorites.

The above print is "Moondog" by Joseph Taylor, and the below print is "Fish Follies" by Anne van Oppen.

Both here and there, we focus on a creature. In one instance it is a dog, honed in on by one-point perspective, nightime isolation, and a spotlight cast by the moon. The light falls from behind the dog, and so casts a dark shadow that bleeds into the frame. I am particularly captivated by the misty, dark grey in the corner that seems even more ominous and likely to swallow him up than the pitch-black structures. The dog himself is in the moment, lapping up water or eating out of a dish. Maybe the dish has been kindly put out for him, or maybe it is merely a found object, such as the lid of a trash can. Under the raining heavens, he satisfies a most basic yearning.


In the second scene, the creature in question is a fish. She, too, eagerly consumes (in this case, a smaller fish) under a heavenly body (this time a bright and cheerful sun) and textured sky. She, too, is diminished by a man-made structure, though it is at a distance and the boat's passenger seems to celebrate her feast.