"Bath"

9" x 5.5" (image) 11" x 7.5" (paper)
White line woodcut
Watercolors on 120 lb. watercolor paper

"Still Life" by Ethel Spowers

I can feel my eyeballs shift
Almost hear the sound
Of the squooshy spheres moving
From one side to the other
Following the light
Cut through the dark.
So many strange artifacts
Arranged in a curious manner.
So many places to settle
And become very quiet
And wonder about this margin
Between the living
And the dead.

"Fleet Street" by Umberto Giovannini

I recently discovered the woodcuts of Umberto Giovannini. Here is an online interview with the artist that gives many insights into his process, specifically as it relates to environmentally conscientious art-making and his community of artists. Giovannini's website can be found here. 


The light has faded to shades of blue and already the buildings seem more like ethereal ghosts than solid structures. The clouds drift down, crowding the light that rises up from the city. All we see in these scant years on this earth is truly but a peek. 

I simultaneously feel as if I am looking out from the perfectly round eye of a nocturnal beastie and considering the landscape as it is reflected in that eye. I also feel as if I am gazing at a moon on an alien world. So many ways I am a stranger.

Bryan Nash Gill’s Print of a the Cross Section of a Tree

This is one print from an entire collection of Bryan Nash Gill's large-scale prints of cross sections of trees. The entire collection can be found in the book Woodcut.

I have no real words that do justice to how I respond to this image,  I suppose just as the artist felt that this particular slab of wood required no additional marks in order to be made into a fully realized fine art print. Sufficed to say that I can and will acquire my copy of the entire edition and return to this image over and over again without ever tiring of its lyrical beauty and complexity.

"Morning Coffee" by Peter Gourfain

It is these mundane

Pleasures that get us through the

Unbearable days

"St Brendan and the Sea Monsters" by Robert Gibbings

The "monsters" featured in this image appear as larger and exaggerated versions of known creatures. My imagination is unconvinced that they are actually below the surface of the water over which graceful dolphins dive and on which the monks' modest boat floats. My brain tells me this is a mashup of two different pages in the story. These creatures might be inspired by nature, however they exist not in the literal world, but rather in the sphere of human perception.

Robert Gibbings was a founding and key member of the Society of Wood Engravers. More on Saint Brendan the Navigator here.

"Wonder" by Campbell Steers

Image posted with the permission of the artist. More of C. Steers's work can be viewed and purchased at the artist's website or High Top Studios online shop.

Diurnal creatures that we are, everyone gets scared of the dark at least sometimes. So in love with the light are we that at night our cities and towns become scattered dots of light that can be viewed from space.

As the bikers wander through the forest, they bring bright lights with them. Lights that cut through the black like daggers. Lights that expectantly and eerily intrude, and thus to the locals becomes like aliens. We become monsters in our own right.