"Pass the Plate, When the Birds Come Home"

I have taken a break from the series-The Things we do... to work on a different set of prints. "Pass the Plate, When the Birds Come Home" deals with the idea of ritual and cycle. Ritual, being the passing of the plate, whether it is at a dinner table or in church there is a ritual of asking for something that is needed or sought to be needed. Cycle, being when the ritual takes place, where, when, and how. What circumstances make it appropriate for the ritual to take place, and how balance becomes disrupted when the ritual is disturb.

These set of prints utilize three different woodblocks. The first is the figure, or "tronie"(head study coined from Rembrandt) which is dense with black symbolizing containment or solitude, the second is the hat printed from a topographical piece of wood showing the rings in which the tree grew. And the last being a block containing birds soaring above it all, because that is what they do, they see everything.

The print is a reference to the individual struggling to comprehend beyond what we know.