"Devonian Reef---Age of Sponges" by Jenny Pope

Image posted with the permission of the artist. Jenny Pope's website can be visited here. I wrote about another of her prints inspired by nature - "Great Lakes Basin" - in 2012. 

The deep oceans of today seem exotic enough with their plethora of wiggling, wandering, swimming, and floating creatures. But here is a period from hundreds of millions of years ago that bore the once flourishing, now extinct ammonites that so capture my fascination. The cephalopods depicted here in Jenny Pope's print appear to be orthocerida, a more hulking predecessor of the ammonites, with their heavy, spear-like shells. It might not be as lyrical as the spiral helmet of a ammonite or nautilus, but it is every bit as impressive. Simpler times, perhaps. 

I love the cropping and colors in this print best. The sodden yellow, often muddied or interrupted by mossy greens and neutral browns, warmly glows against a pastel emerald backdrop. This is such a fantastic, alien city. Alas, my vision is only allotted a small slice of the hustle and bustle in this ancient and aquatic circle of life. 

"Great Lakes Basin" by Jenny Pope

Image posted with the permission of the artist. Jenny Pope's website can be visited here. She also has a blog and Etsy store. Pope wrote about her inspiration for this image here.

A rush of cool air swims by. What is this place? A forest of black trees layered by white snow? Flocks of giant crows and flying dragons. The sun, like a great eye shines no warmth over me. I feel I am tipping over, rendered dizzy by the motion, the lack of gravity. Is this a parallel dimension or another world? I do a double take and see that I am all wrong. Not a forest, but a great undersea floor teeming with life. No sun, crows, or dragons, but swift and slippery sea creatures. Fish, and eels, and a prickly blanket of zebra mussels. Sharp points, sharp contrast of black and white, deep blue and yellow-orange, like gnashing teeth, hungry and searching for a meal in an overcrowded... Bathtub!? Yes indeed, and it leaps into the scene like an angry cat, and the fish and eels panic and scatter, and all is cold and slippery chaos.