"Bathers Throwing Reeds" by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

The two men in showy postures seem to look back at me, while the two women standing still in the water look down. The women appear more isolated and absorbed in their banal activity, while the men are exhibitionists. I find myself wondering, because the figures are so abstract, if this difference in postures is why I assume the two in the background are women (the ones in the foreground are obviously men.) I conclude that my assumption about their sex is more based on the women's generous hips. I look longer, and I think, these colors are strange. What time of day could this possibly be? The sky is black, but the green ground and orange bodies seem lit by the sun. I'm excited by the other-worldliness of this roughly-carved-out, electric-lizard-green place. Why don't the women get involved in the performance? Maybe they are just too used to it.

"Dolphin" by D.S. Wade

Image posted with the permission of the artist. More about D.S. Wade's artwork in a variety of traditional media can be found on her website.

This is one of those images that is so luscious and expressive that I can forget it is a woodcut and see it as an expressionist painting. I see splashes like fireworks, waves like folds in a great sheet, and the muscular form of the dolphin leaping seamlessly through air and water. White and coral-colored scratches tango with fluid sweeps of movement across the picture plane. If I look too long, I feel I cannot breath and must come up for air.

"Leaping Together"

8" x 10" (image)
5-layer reduction woodcut
Edition of 5

This was a commission, which I was enthusiastic about making just because I've never made a woodcut of dolphins, or any animal shaped much like a dolphin. It was an interesting challenge to render an animal so smooth and shiny in a medium so course. Especially when I normally depict things with fur, and occasionally scales or feathers. I did find a connection in the form of camouflage and dissipation; in addition to going with monochromatic blues, I tried to echo some of the squiggles and shapes of the shadows/highlights on the dolphins in the moon and splash of water. And of course the horizontal woodgrain worked well giving the sky some depth and the water some texture. Overall I'm rather pleased.

One of Allen Seaby's Owls

(a found haiku)

hunter or hunted
whatever will be will be
joy and misery

"Dividing Hives in Spring" by Willy Reddick

Image posted with the permission of the artist. More of Willy Reddick's wonderful white line woodcuts and other artwork, jewelry, and ornaments can be viewed at her website.

It is spring! These celebrants of nature are suited up in loose, white costumes and fastidious as they perform their seasonal ritual. The browns will turn green, the greys will turn blue. The scent of fresh blooms will delight our sniffers while a cacophony of birds chirping and bees buzzing will fill the air.

"Pickaback" by Eliza Draper Gardiner

He refuses to wear shoes, which doesn't matter since he loves to be carried. She leans forward and walks at a slow pace into the still, dry air with him clung to her back. The sun hits them at an angle, warming their skin and casting a long shadow on the sand, which is sparsely littered with wrappers, toys, and other evidence of the day's human presence. There aren't enough clouds in the sky to produce a fantastic sunset. Instead, the colors are soft and even. However, the play between the contrasting cool hues is quite lovely, and certainly worthy of taking notice.

"Nightwalker" by Holly Meade

Image posted with the permission of the artist. More of Holly Meade's work can be found at her website.

As I move through the forest, all the branches, leaves, buds, and blooms in the foreground expand and disappear, leaving room for more and more of the same. Dry leaves crunch under my feet. I look down at uneven layers of bark, twigs, and soil, and it occurs to me that I'm walking on eons of broken down corpses. I think of the multitude of small rodents, bugs, and roots that make up a whole other dark, squirmy and moist underground world. I'm walking on that, too. It's night now, and the only reason I can see anything is the beams of moonlight which criss-cross from surface to surface. It's so easy to get lost here. How much times has passed? Ten minutes? An hour? I just don't know. I've become so divorced from this sort of experience, I feel like an alien visiting another planet. But really I'm from here.

Suddenly, out of all the blue-black debris and into the most brightly moon-lit spot steps a deer. I stop and cautiously look up to examine this native inhabitant, and to my surprise encounter a familiar face.