"Woman's Torso" by Sonia Romero

Image posted with the artist's permission. More about Sonia Romero's artwork can be found at her website. Prints and other original works of fine art can be purchased from her online store She Rides the Lion.

Although it bears many similarities, this isn't a wood or linoleum cut. The textured background is a collograph made with acrylic paint on mat board that is later inked up and printed. The red part is a papercut that has also been inked up and printed. Because of the delicate nature of the papercut layer, Sonia Romero only made a limited edition of 5.

Though this image seems direct in its subject and composition, the longer I stare at it, the more it seems a complex mass of contradictions. At first glance I saw an elegant floral design laid over an organic, female shape. But the longer I stare, the more I find myself meditating on the perfect symmetry and ultimately the platonic oddness of it. Faces, eyes, and teeth begin to pop in and out from the petals and leaves. I feel I have discovered a keyhole that peers into another realm. One more ordered and certainly beautiful, but still dangerous.

"Des jardins du Trocadéro l'automne", Henri Rivière

It has rained and I am bent over on a park bench feeling the caress of a cool breeze and listening to my own heartbeat.

The leaves have turned brown. Yesterday they were still lemon yellow, juicy orange, apple red. It is a strange and delicious dissolution.

They fall so gently. Float, really. Sometimes even twirl. It seems a happy dance, though they all end up on the same damp ground. There they will soon crumble, coalesce with more ancient soil, and feed the fruit of another day.

"Under the Sky" by Coco Berkman

Image posted with the artist's permission. More about the artist and her works can be found on her website and her online store StageFortPress.

I fell in love with Coco Berkman's work (her color reduction linocuts in particular) last year, but have only gotten around to writing about a piece on my blog now because I had too much trouble selecting a single piece to write about. Recently I looked at Berkman's work again and this print finally jumped out at me as one I especially want to feature.

Berkman wrote me this about the piece:

"I created it for a group show entitled 'The individual in the community', and the image comes from a stream of consciousness drawing in my sketchbook. I used only 3 colors but I think the simple color palette adds a special poetry to the image."

The idea of the "individual in the community" resonates with me as I view this image. I feel it is full of potent contradictions. The greenish-blue is somewhat drab, yet the purple is a cheery shade. All emphasis is on the portrait - the people in the background barely noticeable. Her face smack in the middle of the composition, yet cut through the center by the horizon. The substance of her body is dissolved into the landscape by a pattern of flowers and her facial features are like wobbly playground structures. There is loneliness even in a crowd.

I am reminded of this quote from Wendy Mass's The Candymakers:

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about."

"Canvas" by Anna Filimonova

Image posted with the permission of the artist. Anna Filimonova has a number of stunning color prints with as much imagination and movement as this beauty, available on her online store: Filimanaprint.

The movement is so fluid, the concentration so deep, that what flows in and out are indistinguishable. Equally equivalent are the literal interior space and the landscape of the mind. Not to mention what is happening now and what events have already passed however long ago. She is in the moment, creating.

“Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person's capacity to act.” -Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi 

"Five Reclining Black Cats" by Tadashige Nishida

A single black mass
So many heads with eyes to
Peer, gawk, squint or blink

More Cats by Inagaki Tomoo

If I'm featuring a short run of haikus in response to cat prints by Japanese printmakers, I just gotta include one by Inagaki Tomoo.

A muscular pair of gargoyles
Perched on the midnight watch
The moon winks

Two Cats and a Lemon by Ido Masao

What can I say, I'm on a haiku-paired-with-cat-prints-by-Japanese-printmakers streak. Although Ido Masao is a wee bit more contemporary than Kiyoshi Saito or Junichiro Sekino. I predict the streak will last through Halloween.


Juicy, black squiggle
Mirrored by a pale foil
Calligraphy come to life