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.